


Her Heart Was a Secret Garden and the Walls Were Very High

by Nike_SGA



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: And here they are, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hecate deserves the world, Hurt/Comfort, I have a lot of feelings, Season 3 Spoilers, Two witches in love, tw: confinement
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2019-11-27 02:36:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 40,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18188660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nike_SGA/pseuds/Nike_SGA
Summary: "Thirty years were long and hard,Confined to turret, wall and yard."Once upon a time, a little girl turned her friend to stone. Hecate Hardbroom's time at Cackle's Academy.





	1. what cannot be said will be wept

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in my feelings about that finale, guys, and it was either eat them or write this. This is mostly me processing my new headcannons, for I have Thoughts.
> 
> Title from 'The Princess Bride' by W. Goldman, and chapter headings from Sappho, because she can always be relied upon to provide a good one.

Two weeks after she watched Indigo Moon turn to stone, Joy Hardbroom sits in a high-backed chair before Alma Cackle’s desk, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes trained on the wood-grain before her. She’s been here before, of course: during last term, when Mistress Wardwell had caught her out-of-bounds, dancing with Indigo in a crowded park of Ordinary people. Mrs. Cackle had been furious then, red-cheeked and stormy and had passed down her sentence with indisputable finality. 

 

_ You will not leave this castle, or the grounds of the castle, again until the day you graduate from this academy, Miss Hardbroom, do you  _ **_hear_ ** _ me! Of all the thoughtless, irresponsible,  _ **_dangerous…_ ** _! _

 

She’s not shouting now, though. Instead, she is seated on the other side of the desk, features carefully schooled into a neutral expression, although the paleness of her face and the slight tremble of her chin betray her. She clears her throat, pauses, starts to speak, pauses again. Finally, she folds her hands together and Joy feels her gaze on the top of her head.

 

“The Great Wizard has reached a decision, Joy. Given the circumstances…the fate of the Ordinary girl and, and -,” she pauses again to draw in a breath. “His Greatness has decided to extend your confinement to Cackle’s Academy.”

 

Joy lifts her eyes, uncomprehending. She’s already restricted to the castle and the grounds; does the Grand Wizard mean to keep her shut up in her room until the end of her sixth year now? Her confusion must show on her face, because Mrs. Cackle presses her lips together, her eyes suddenly rather wet looking. 

 

“You stole a Wishing Star, Joy,” she says. “You risked exposing our society to non-magicals and then broke a fundamental rule of the Code to give one of them power she had no possible hope of controlling. And now she’s as good as dead.” Miss Cackle glances away as Joy flinches, gives her a moment to compose herself. “These crimes are very serious,” she concludes lamely, clenching her hands together so tightly her knuckles whiten. “The great Wizard feels that you are a…a  _ threat  _ to magical society. Therefore, it is his ruling that you are to remain at this castle. Indefinitely.”

 

Joy stares at her in horror as understanding floods sharp and cold through her veins. Her face feels hot and her eyes stings and words claw up her windpipe, ready to hurtle into the world in imploration:

 

_ I’m sorry I’m sorry please you can’t I didn’t mean to I’m sorry I’m so so sorry please please I didn’t mean to hurt anyone  _

 

_ she was my friend _

 

Mrs. Cackle continues, “Your Great Aunt has been contacted, of course, and she has accepted His Greatness’s judgement on the matter. She agrees it may be for the best.”

 

_ She’s ashamed of you _ , Joy hears.

 

“We have all agreed it may be for the best.”

 

_ We all are. _

 

And Joy thinks of Indy, flushed with power, the castle walls rattling around her as she runs, her hood thrown up over her head as she spreads her hands, and the cold, grey stone crawling over her features and down her arms and legs until she is nothing more than a statue, and she’s gone, and she’s never coming back.

 

“Yes, Mrs. Cackle,” she whispers, lowering her eyes once more to the table.

 

There’s silence for a few moments as Mrs. Cackle regards her, seemingly unsure of what to do or say. “A fresh start, I think, next term, Joy,” she offers eventually. “A fresh start will do us all the world of good.”

 

As she closes the office door quietly behind her, Joy thinks she sees Mrs. Cackle lower her head and press her hand to her eyes, but she can’t be sure.


	2. to me you have meant everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Pippa Pentangle is wrapped in a dress of gold, honey blonde hair cascading over her bare shoulders, lips pink, fingers loose around the bell of a glass."

Hecate materialises in the centre of the Leavers’ Ball, right in the middle of the brightly-lit dance floor where the Cackle’s witches and wizards from nearby Wandwick’s Academy are laughing and twirling in anticipatory delight. Her gown is pure silver, flowing over her body and down into waterfall sleeves and loose skirt, cinched at her waist by a wide, silver belt. Her hat, enchanted silver for the evening, glitters atop her long, dark hair, through which she has woven tiny, black beads that catch the lights and make her shimmer as she turns. The dancers and the conversation stop dead, and she feels all eyes on her as girls and boys alike gasp and gape in disbelief, shock and – she notes with a flicker of triumph – admiration. Satisfied, she strides from the dance floor over towards the table where the punch bowl sits, ladling herself a generous amount and trying not to tremble. 

 

The ball has been months in the planning, and the Great Hall of Cackle’s has been transformed for the occasion, with long tables and flower garlands and fairy-lights. One last hurrah for the girls finishing their studies, the girls who have worked so hard for their final exams, the girls who will be flying off at the end of the week to start the next chapter of their lives at university, or at new jobs, or abroad.

 

The girls who will be leaving.

 

Cackle’s will become a distant memory for them, she thinks, in the next year, or two, or ten. A place that they can remember fondly, of misremembered anecdotes and funny stories and snatches of songs and classrooms. They will leave, and she will stay, and they will forget this Academy with its drafty rooms and winding corridors and odd little traditions until all that remains to them is an impression of their schooldays, which they’ll later recall were - probably - the best days of their lives.

 

She catches Mrs. Cackle’s concerned eyes and worried frown, and quickly averts her gaze back towards the rest of the hall, where the dancing has started again amid scandalised whispering. Some of her classmates are glowering at her, or at their partners, and some are regarding her with a sort of semi-impressed appreciation.

 

They’ll forget Cackle’s, but after her little appearance tonight, she thinks in bitter gratification, she’s made damn sure they won’t forget her.

 

She becomes aware that she is still under scrutiny and she turns slightly. Pippa Pentangle is wrapped in a dress of gold, honey blonde hair cascading over her bare shoulders, lips pink, fingers loose around the bell of a glass. She’s contemplating Hecate from the other side of the hall, her normally warm, brown eyes lacklustre and her expression guarded, but still so beautiful that Hecate can hardly bring herself to look at her.

 

Pippa Pentangle, who saw the change in Hecate those first days of their third year, and instead of casting her off as the others did had resolved to become her best friend instead. Pippa, who over the years had become her support, and her confidante, and her happiness, and who had never known – who must  _ never, ever  _ know – what Hecate had done. Pippa, who will be off to Weirdsister in September to study Modern Chanting and Secondary Education, and who had grown more and more confused as the year went by and Hecate wouldn’t divulge her own plans for after sixth year.

 

_ “But have you applied to Weirdsister yet, Hiccup? You’d get on their Potions courses in a heartbeat! You’d be teaching the class in the space of a term! Or were you thinking about travelling instead? I could always take a gap year, too, you know, and come with you.” _

 

She hasn’t spoken to Pippa in almost six months, not since she stood her up at the broomstick display and purposefully humiliated her in front of the school. Pippa doesn’t understand, couldn’t possibly understand, why. She thinks it’s something she’s done, Hecate knows, and her skin crawls from the guilt of it. She’s been forbidden from mentioning Indigo Moon to anyone, a cover-up by the Council and the Cackles and her Aunt to spare reputations all round, but...she could tell her; she  _ wants _ to tell her, and maybe Pippa, Pippa of all people-

 

_ We have all agreed it may be for the best. _

 

And best for Pippa, Hecate had realised, is that she goes on with her life away from here. That she goes to University and becomes a teacher and sets up the school she’s talked about and planned since she first discovered Modern Magical Theory in their fourth year and displayed an aptitude for it that took Hecate’s breath away. The attraction between them has become harder and harder to ignore, and Hecate thinks that Pippa might love her - knows she loves Pippa – and knows as well that if Pippa found out Hecate couldn’t leave Cackle’s, the Grand Wizard himself wouldn’t be able to drag her out of this castle. She’d stay, and be tutored privately alongside her by the woman her Aunt Prudence has engaged from the Witch Training College, and she’d fight a losing battle for Hecate’s freedom because she’s both a hopeless romantic who always believes things will turn out in the end, and as infuriatingly stubborn as an ox. 

 

Hecate misses her badly already.

 

And that’s why she’ll walk away again, now. She breaks Pippa’s stare, tosses back her glass of punch, and turns on her heel to walk out. Out of the ball, and out of their sight and out of their lives. She’s made her point to the rest of them. They’ll remember her, whenever they remember this night; Hecate Hardbroom, silver and shining and surrounded by light. 

 

Pippa…Pippa is the only one Hecate hopes will forget her entirely.


	3. the time is passing, and I lie alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Mistress Broomhead arrives at Cackle’s Academy in late August, two weeks before the students return from their summer holiday."

Mistress Broomhead arrives at Cackle’s Academy in late August, two weeks before the students return from their summer holiday. Mrs. Cackle and Hecate meet her by the door, and Hecate is struck by her tall frame and dark eyes and pinched features. Mrs. Cackle bows in greeting, and Hecate distantly hears her murmur their introductions, but Broomhead’s attention is entirely on her, cool and assessing as she looks down her acicular nose.

 

“I hear,” she begins in a measured voice that curls behind Hecate’s neck and tenses her shoulders, “that you are quite adept at Potions.”  She arches an eyebrow, and beside her Mrs. Cackle falls silent.

 

Hecate swallows

 

***

 

 _“She was the most thorough and relentless witch I ever met,”_ Hecate will recount years later, as she sips tea in Ada’s office, the memory of her old tutor confined to the far reaches of her mind even as the evidence of Broomhead’s influence manifests itself in her rigid posture, her disciplined hands, her often sharp tongue.

 

From the beginning, Broomhead demands a level of control that drains Hecate, to whom magic has always come so easily. She re-tests her every magical ability, as if the Advanced Higher Witching Certificate bearing Hecate’s name might have been conjured from the air to bear false witness to her capability. She observes and measures and assesses on a rubric of her own devising, scoring Hecate in some unfathomable way that leaves her confused and off-balance and wondering if she’s doing well or failing at a test which no-one has yet explained to her.

 

The rest of the students arrive with the first week of September, and there is confusion among the returning witches as to why Hecate Hardbroom, who surely was meant to leave with her cohort last term, is still very much in attendance at the Academy. Alma Cackle invents some story in which Hecate is helping out at the school in some vague capacity while being privately tutored by a highly sought-after instructor, and while the sixth years are suspicious and the fifth years bewildered, scrutiny for Hecate’s situation dwindles as it passes down the class groups to the first years, who can spare no thought for anything other than staying afloat in this new, overwhelming environment. Hecate sees little of them, anyway; she still resides in her distant room at the top of the castle, and Mrs. Cackle has put an unoccupied classroom aside for her and Mistress Broomhead’s use. For her part, Broomhead shows no interest in the other witches who have filled the castle once again with their voices and laughter and energy. Her focus is entirely on Hecate, as she painstakingly deconstructs her to find the limits of her power and slowly, surely begins to expand them, watching her with what Hecate sometimes thinks is derision, sometimes contempt, sometimes a strange sort of fascination that she doesn’t understand. Most days, she is too tired to dwell on it.

 

It’s foolish, she reflect afterwards, not to think that word will get back to Pippa eventually. Someone’s sister or niece or cousin will be friends with someone else, who knows someone at Weirdsister, who knows Pippa - the magical community isn’t that big, in the end. (And wasn’t that part of the reason for her original punishment? For endangering a fragile community still rebuilding and repopulating itself, two hundred and fifty years after they were last hunted and cornered and burned at the stake?) The letter shouldn’t come as a surprise to her, but as she looks into the sympathetic eyes of Miss Bat a few days after the Yule break, and wordlessly takes the envelope addressed in Pippa’s familiar, copperplate hand, there’s a nervous, sick feeling in her stomach. Miss Bat shuffles quietly from the chanting classroom - and Hecate doesn’t think to wonder why her former teacher had beckoned her in here instead of giving her the letter in front of Broomhead - and she sinks down into a student-sized chair that was already too small for her two years ago. Her fingers are surprisingly steady as she slips them under the flap to break the seal.

 

“ _Dear Hecate,_

 

 _I hope this letter finds you well, and that you don’t mind me writing to you. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms. I must confess to being rather surprised to learn that you were still at Cackle’s. Theodora Foxbane’s little sister Tamara is there in her second year now, and she recognised you, and Theo and I are in the same Chanting class at uni these days, so she told me about it.”_ And there it is, Hecate thinks.

 

“ _Anyway, I had no idea that you were planning on staying on and studying privately. Theo says you have a tutor there from WTC. That must be very rewarding. I hope your studies are going well. I’m enjoying Weirdsister a great deal, and I’ve met many lovely new people on my course.”_

 

In her mind, Hecate can practically see Pippa, sitting up straight at her writing desk in her halls of residence, trying to write with an easy nonchalance as if catching up with any old classmate. She’s probably sent out a dozen similar letters, she thinks, to girls who claimed her friendship at school. Even as the idea crosses her mind though, the tone of the letter shifts, a visible break in the stream of words slanting elegantly across the page.

 

_“I can’t tell you how sorry this silence between us makes me, Hecate.”_

 

The Pippa in her head clenches her fingers around her pen, closes her eyes briefly, takes a steadying breath.

 

“ _I’m not sure what happened between us, but I’d like to fix it, if you’ll let me try. I wish I had known you were staying at Cackle’s. I wish I knew how you’re doing, and what you’re studying, and what your plans are. All the things we used to talk about so much. I miss talking to you._

 

_I know you must be busy, but if you have time and if you’d like, I would love for you to come to Weirdsister, and we could catch up. Or I could come to Cackle’s, if you’d rather. Even if it’s just for an afternoon or a game of chess, like we used to do. Please write back to me, and let me know. I do very much want to see you, Hiccup._

 

_I really do hope you’re well,_

 

_All my love,_

 

_Pippa.”_

 

She’s crying before she really knows it, breaking in a way that she hasn’t allowed herself since she watched Indigo turn to stone, or in the corridor outside Mrs. Cackle’s office, or standing at a turret window watching the figures of her classmates shrink, smaller and smaller as they flew away for the last time. Miss Bat is back, and pressing a steaming cup of tea into her hands, patting her shoulder anxiously.

 

“Oh dear,” she lulls to the sobbing witch. “Oh my dear, dear.” The Extraordinary Esper Vespertilio, Hecate thinks - Pippa had always admired her so. Eventually she quietens, wrung out and raw, her head aching and the skin around her eyes tight. Miss Bat sits quietly with her for a moment, reaching out to touch one finger to the letter on the table, lying where Hecate dropped it to cover her mouth with her hands. She looks at it without reading the contents, but Hecate knows she recognises the handwriting; would have recognised the handwriting straight away.

 

“A good girl, Phyllis,” she murmurs absently. “You and she always seemed to understand each other so well.” Her gazes fixes on Hecate, suddenly penetrating, and Hecate is reminded that this is a woman who has lived a long life already, and has seen a lot of things, and is almost certainly not as doddery and distant as she’d like people to believe. “It would be nice to see how she’s getting on,” she concludes, meaningfully.

 

Hecate nods, wiping her eyes and rising gracefully from her chair. “Thank you, Miss Bat,” she offers quietly, folding the note into a pocket of her dress and raising her hand to transfer to her tower room, bypassing the lesson on arcane incantations she’d been heading to before she’d been waylaid. Broomhead will be furious, she knows, but she clenches her jaw and sits down at her desk, pulling a wad of paper towards her. And after a moment’s hesitation, she begins to write.

 

And she writes and writes, drafts and redrafts, endless pages of apologies and confessions and regrets. She tells Pippa everything: about slipping out of the castle during her second year to see the Ordinary world; about Indigo and the Wishing Star and her terrible, terrible mistake; about the Great Wizard and his punishment and her longing to follow Pippa to university, to be with her. She tells her about Broomhead, and her unrelenting methods and ruthless criticisms. She writes about the broomstick display, and her remorse, and how she believed - truly, honestly believed - she was doing Pippa a favour. How Pippa has been her best friend, and how she’s cared for her, and how she’s loved her since she was fifteen and loves her still and how she’s never, ever far from her mind. She thinks about her every day, misses her every minute, wonders what her life is like and who her new friends are and what if, what if what if…

 

When her hand is aching, and her eyes are burning, and the sun is low on the horizon and making it too difficult to see any more she stops, exhausted from writing, and weeping, and fighting every wretched emotion that swirls inside of her and pours out onto the page. Her shoulders are trembling with effort, and her throat is dry and painful, so she conjours herself a glass of water and moves to sit by the window.

 

In the last light of the setting sun, she looks out over the grounds of the academy, stretching out before her and disappearing into the twilight. The great, high walls circling the castle loom out of the low light and cast long shadows over the lawns, and the forests have already sunk into impenetrable gloom. She watches as the edges of her world shrink inwards, becoming lost to  the darkness as the sun finally dips out of sight and the night falls. Around her, the lanterns begin to flicker into life.

 

Hecate closes the shutters and dresses for bed. When she wakes in the night from a dream of Pippa’s warm skin and smiling mouth, hair damp at her temples and a desperate ache between her thighs, she screws her eyes shut and slips her hands beneath her covers as she has done a hundred times since she realised what she felt for Pippa Pentangle was more than innocent, childish friendship. She imagines sending her letter, and Pippa reading it, and understanding, and flying here immediately, all the way from Weirdsister to fold Hecate in her arms and press her lips to Hecate’s jaw, her cheek, her mouth.

 

_Oh, Hiccup._

 

Hecate turns her head into her pillow to muffle the small, desperate noise she makes as she comes, legs and stomach trembling as she rides her fingers through it, breath coming in short quick bursts.

 

_I love you, Hiccup._

 

Her hand stills, and her breathing slows, and she slowly, slowly comes back to herself.

 

_I’ll never leave you._

 

Hecate stares up into the blackness and _wants_ and wants, and knows she can never have. Not with Pippa. Not like this.

 

In the morning, she rolls up the stack of paper and secures it with ribbon. She should destroy it, probably, but she can’t bring herself to, not when every word inside of it is the truth. She crosses to the chest at the foot of her bed. Inside are a few knicknacks: an ornament of her mother’s, the woven pink and purple bracelet that matched with Indigo’s. Little reminders of all the relationships Hecate’s ever treasured, and lost. She drops the rolled-up papers into the chest, and slips Pippa’s original letter in beside them, and closes the lid.

 

When she appears for breakfast and crosses to the teacher’s table, where Mrs. Cackle permits her to sit, Broomhead lifts an eyebrow at her but says nothing. They eat in silence, side by side, and the rest of the staff, perhaps noticing a tension in the air, are equally subdued. Once they are both finished, Broomhead rises swiftly, and looks down at her. “Come, Miss Hardbroom,” she instructs in clipped tones. “We have some making up to do for yesterday.” She ignores Mrs. Cackle’s questioning frown and demurely follows Broomhead out of the Great Hall, passing Miss Bat as she goes.

 

Hecate does not meet her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You *guys*, thank you for all your lovely comments on the previous chapters! I was really nervous about posting this fic at all (I’ve never really done multi-chapters!) and then everyone was so encouraging and I really appreciate it, and you’re all great.


	4. and listens near to your sweet voice and lovely laughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "One day, when the exhaustion and frustration and the unfairness of it all become too much for her, she flees from castle after her last lesson and stands before the statue in the woods that once was Indigo Moon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters keep getting longer and longer, so at this rate the final one will be roughly the size of The Illiad. A lot of my head-cannon for Indigo's situation goes off the idea that she could in fact have been turned back at any time by a qualified witch (or wizard), given how blasé Miss Bat seems about it in the finale, but that someone took the decision she was too much of a risk. WW98's Merlin Langstaff did not deserve the blatant villainisation he got in this chapter, but hey, here we are.

Broomhead stays at Cackle’s for five years, and in that time she molds Hecate into the pinnacle of traditional witchery, a model of self-control and discipline, with an iron-fisted command of her powers. It is not easy. The training is rigorous and demanding, and Broomhead’s standards are at times impossibly high. Hecate must recall her chants and incantations perfectly at any moment, must choose her ingredients and brew her potions with maximum efficiency, bend her broomstick to her will with a thought, appear and disappear without a split second’s hesitation; she must sit up straighter, choose her words carefully and _listen when she is spoken to._

 

She doesn’t hear from Pippa again, and Hecate cannot blame her. As far as Pippa is concerned, she has reached out and been unequivocally rebuffed, just like she had every other time during their final year when she had pleaded with Hecate to just _tell her_ what was wrong. For a few months, she entertains a wild, anxious fantasy that Pippa will come anyway; will grow tired of being ignored and turn up at her window demanding to be heard, and Hecate will _have_ to explain, and Pippa will finally, finally know everything. She doesn’t, of course, and Hecate respects her for it, even as she’s left with an incurable yearning.

 

She doesn’t lose track of her completely though: Pippa keeps in contact with Miss Bat, and the older witch will occasionally drop her name into conversation, watching Hecate out of the corner of her eye to gauge her reaction. Alma receives the Weirdsister College alumni newsletter every few months, and when she leaves it in the staffroom Hecate scours it for any mention of Pippa Pentangle, knowing without a doubt that with her abilities for Modern Magic and her unfailing determination to explore the possibilities of contemporary witching theory that she’ll be making her presence felt somehow. And there, indeed, she is - a newly elected representative on the Student Council; a paper accepted to the national Witching Education in Britain conference; the youngest ever speaker at the Fédération de Magie Moderne in Luxembourg. She’s a member of the Weirdsister College Chanting and Choral Society too, of course, and Miss Bat attends a number of their performances, rhapsodising when she returns on Pippa’s harmonies and solos. Once, she brings back a recording of their recent concert in London; ninety minutes of traditional and reworked chants and cantatas in which she can pick out Pippa’s voice, clear and high, familiar and beloved, soothing the ragged edges of her heart even as it breaks it into pieces all over again. She sneaks down to the chanting classroom in the dark to listen to it, volume turned low, her eyes closed and an almost-peaceful expression settling over her features for what feels like the first time in years. After a few nights, the record appears in her bedroom after dinner, perched on her desk beside a dusty old gramophone rescued from a store cupboard somewhere. Miss Bat never asks for it back.

 

Besides a few hours at night when she sleeps as best she can (and Broomhead had told her disparagingly once that a _real_ witch was mistress of the tool that is her body, and slept and ate only as strictly necessary, and hardly _every night_ ), Hecate has no time for anything but her studies. Broomhead pushes her and pushes her, until she is trembling with effort and sick with fatigue that she combats with regular doses of Wide-Awake Potion. Her power and her control increase, until they wind tightly around her body and in her blood, and force her tall and straight. She is impressive, she knows instinctively, although Broomhead is never impressed. And she is lonely - a solitary figure that moves silently around the castle and startles the students who regard her warily. This year, the last of the girls who remember her, however distantly, as a fellow pupil will graduate, and no-one from her own schooldays will be left.

 

One day, when the exhaustion and frustration and the unfairness of it all become too much for her, she flees from castle after her last lesson and stands before the statue in the woods that once was Indigo Moon. She reaches out unsteady fingers to dislodge some of the light smattering of moss that’s begun to creep over her friend’s limbs and features, feeling the hot trickle of tears drop from her cheeks. She hasn’t been here in a long time. When Indigo had first been turned, before the Great Wizard’s sentence, she had come here to beg her forgiveness, to kneel at her feet and promise with everything she was that she would make this better, that Indigo would be free. _I didn’t mean to_ , she’d wept, _I’m sorry, Indy; I didn’t mean for this to happen._

 

The last time had been some months after the passing of her perpetual confinement. She had looked on as the other witches left for Yule, a tide of bodies exiting the academy gates  or taking to the skies, and her heart had pounded in her chest, her palms itching and a tight knot squeezing at her throat until something inside her had snapped, and she’d run; out of the school and over the lawns, through the woods until she’d seen the subtle markers on the trees that mapped the edges of the Cackle’s grounds. And she’d kept going and going until she hit the perimeter and felt her body dissolve as though she’d cast a transfer-spell, and she’d rematerialised, frantic and breathless and staring into the blank stone eyes of Indigo Moon. This was part of her punishment then, she understood: if she tried to leave, she would be brought back here to this place among the trees, face-to-face with her own dreadful mistake.

 

 _I didn’t mean to_ , she’d cried.

 

 _But you did,_ a voice in her head whispers back, and it sounds so much like Mistress Broomhead that she shudders involuntarily. She had meant to. She had meant to go into the outside world, even though she knew it was expressly forbidden. She had meant to steal the Wishing Star, and bring Indigo to Cackle’s, and ignore a cardinal tenet of the Witches’ Code to give her magic, because she wanted her friend, because she thought she knew better, because she thought she could handle it.

 

Her tired mind drifts back to the day in the Great Hall when she had stood, white-faced and trembling, before the imposing figures of the Great Wizard, and Mrs. Cackle, and Prudence Hardbroom.

 

 _I cannot begin to fathom,_ the deep, cold voice of Merlin Langstaff had proclaimed, _what you thought you were doing, you foolish girl. Was the risk of betraying our society to the non-magicals once not sufficient for you to learn your lesson? Not content with running amok amongst them in their own town, you would bring one of them here, into our most secret domains? Reveal to her this place where we trust young witches to be safe?  Would you have brought another Pendle upon us? Another Bargarran?_ Behind him, a younger man of about thirty-five holds His Greatness’s staff; his apprentice, who will one day be Great Wizard himself. He regards her with what she can almost believe is sympathy.

 

 _And to give her_ **_magic_ ** _,_ the Great Wizard pauses, as if just to vocalise the idea gives him pain, and her Great Aunt closes her eyes briefly. Hecate can see her dig her nails into the palms of her hands where she clenches them at her side.

 

 _It is a mercy, then,_ he continues, _that she can no longer reveal our existence or our whereabouts to those who would use them against us,_ and Hecate regards him in shock.

 

 _But-_ , she begins, and Aunt Prudence’s eyes widen alarmingly in warning.

 

 _But?_ the Great Wizard intones darkly.

 

Hecate swallows, throat dry, but driven by a desperate determination. _But you don’t mean to leave Indigo as a statue?_ she finishes beseechingly.

 

There is a still moment, when Mrs Cackle and Hecate’s Aunt stare at the Great Wizard, and he regards Hecate, expression utterly unreadable.

 

 _Is the girl dangerous?_ he asks eventually, and Hecate startles, looking first to Mrs. Cackle and then to Aunt Prudence, uncertain how to respond.

 

 _Is the girl_ ** _dangerous_** _?_ Langstaff repeats slowly, and Hecate feels sick as she suddenly understands what’s about to happen.

 

_She- she…_

 

_She tried to destroy this academy, did she not?_

 

 _Yes,_ Hecate admits _, but she-_

 

_She cannot control her magic?_

 

_No, but she’s never been taught-_

 

_Would she give it up if ordered to by the Magic Council? Relinquish it willingly and return to Ordinary life where she belongs, and never tell a soul about witches or wizards or how they can grant a mere human being such immeasurable power?_

 

_I...I…._

 

He cuts her off, emphasising every word crisply to drive his point home: _Is the girl dangerous, Miss Hardbroom_?

 

And she wants to say no, wants to explain to him about dancing and ice-cream and magic tricks in the park, but she remembers Indy’s rapturous eyes and unrestrained glee as she set off sparks and shattered glass and proclaimed with a flourish and a wild laugh that she could make a whole castle disappear as Hecate’s repeated pleas for her to stop fell on deaf ears. A leaden weight settles in Hecate’s stomach as she realises she cannot lie. She wants to, she _wants_ to, but so much damage has been done already and Indigo wouldn’t _listen,_ and now all she can do is condemn her friend with a word.

 

_Yes._

 

Mrs Cackle bows her head, and the Great Wizard sits back in his chair, satisfied.

 

 _Then she will remain as she is, and where she is._ _And as for you…_

 

Hecate barely hears him as he turns to her Aunt and tells her he will consider what is to be done about her. Aunt Prudence is nodding and thanking him with as much dignity as she can muster given her mortification, and Mrs Cackle has descended from the podium to take her elbow gently and begin to steer her towards the door. Before she leaves, she catches the gaze of the apprentice again, and he watches her all the way out of sight.

 

 _I didn’t mean to_.

 

But she had, and Indigo had, and as she swallows the bile that’s risen in her throat Hecate looks at the statue of a fourteen year old girl who will never have the chance to grow into a young woman, even one trapped in the expansive grounds of a school where she has the chance to learn, and develop her power, and has a roof over head and three meals a day and people who care about her, in their own way. They have both paid for her mistake. It is Hecate’s fault she is here, and Hecate’s fault that they can neither of them leave. She told the truth, she thinks, and maybe one day she will learn how to live with the guilt of it.

 

***

 

At the end the fifth year, Broomhead packs up her cauldron and her books and declares that she has fulfilled her contract. Under her tutelage, Hecate has obtained her Ordinary Witching Degree, her Honours in Occult Herbology, and a Masters of Arcane Arts in Potion Theory and Practice. A witch from WTC adjudicates her exams at Cackle’s, congratulating Broomhead each time on her success, and Hecate breathes easier with every pass, and distinction, and award.

 

She lurks outside Mrs. Cackle’s office as Broomhead delivers her final report, ready to transfer away at a moment’s notice if the door swings open, but a simple Aural Enhancement spell allows her to listen to the two witches enclosed inside.

 

“What will you do with her now?”

 

Mrs. Cackle sighs, and Hecate hears a teacup placed on the wooden surface of a table. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

 

“I would take her, you know. She has the capacity for enormous development. As my apprentice at the Witch Training College-”

 

“You know that’s impossible,” Mrs. Cackle interrupts, and Hecate’s heart begins to calm from the sudden rapid increase of terror Broomhead’s suggestion had inflicted.

 

“I would be happy to speak to the Great Wizard on her behalf.”

 

But Mrs. Cackle remains resolute: “I don’t believe it would do anyone any good. The matter was settled. Irrevocably so.”

 

Hecate can hear this displeasure in Broomhead’s voice as she drawls, “A pity. She could have been great.”

 

“She could be, still,” Mrs. Cackle snaps in response, and Hecate swirls into nothing as she hears them rise and move towards the door. Broomhead takes no leave of her, and she watches from her window with Morgana nestled in her arms as the dark figure disappears in the sky, over the horizon and away. She hopes fervently that she never sees her again. A knock sounds at her door, and she calls for the visitor to come in.

 

Mrs. Cackle enters the room almost hesitantly. She crosses to where Hecate stands, scratching the cat absent-mindedly behind the ears, and takes a good look at her for what to Hecate feels like the first time in years. “Have you thought about what you’d like to do now, Hecate?” she broaches eventually.

 

 _Leave_ , the traitorous little voice in her head answers, still. She pushes it down.

 

“I was hoping…” she replies haltingly, stumbling over her words a little, so used is she now to a quick reprimand if she speaks out of turn or without proper thought. “...to do something...useful? Around the school.” Her Great Aunt pays a stipend to the Cackles, she knows, for her room and board, but she’s not sure how long the old woman will be willing to keep her, a disgrace to the family name as she is. Mrs. Cackle is nodding thoughtfully, though, and Hecate realises she probably already had a suggestion before coming here.

 

“Mistress Balfour is getting on in years,”  she poses, referring to the Potions mistress who, Hecate heard rumour in her school days, arrived at Cackle’s with the Founding Stone. “The classes she is more than capable of continuing, of course, but the rest of it - the ingredient gathering, the preparation, maintaining the greenhouses, it all takes so much _time_ , you see.”

 

A little spark of anticipation flares in Hecate’s chest, and her voice is thick when she offers “I would be more than happy to assist her, Mrs. Cackle.”

 

Alma Cackle smiles, pleased. “Good. I know how you enjoy working with plants and things, and you’re more than qualified. We really do need someone to keep an eye on the grounds, and the woods and such. If you wouldn’t mind starting on Monday.”

 

Hecate nods mutely. She _does_ love plants, and potions, and she’s _good_ at it, and maybe Mistress Balfour would be amenable to letting her try growing a few new things, and brewing a few potions she’s been devising. The witch has always been very fond of Hecate.

 

She can visit Indigo in the woods, from time to time, too. She can take care of her. She doesn’t deserve to be overgrown with moss and lichen, and forgotten.

 

Mrs. Cackle offers a last pet to Morgana’s soft head and bids Hecate goodnight. She deposits the cat on the bed, and changes into her nightdress, mind already racing ahead to Monday, dizzy with possibility for the first time in years, and light with the knowledge that there will be no more Broomhead.

 

She lets Pippa’s voice sing her to sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical note: The Pendle witch trial of 1612 is one of the most notorious in English history, leading to the publication of Thomas Potts' 'The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster'. Nine women and two men - including the delightfully named Alice Nutter - were accused of witchcraft, and ten were hanged. Ada's cat is, I imagine, named in their memory. The Paisley witches were a group of men and women in 1692 charged with bewitching the daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, and are considered the last 'mass execution' of witches in Western Europe, presumably because once the Scots get an idea it takes us a while to let it go. One of the witches, Agnes Naismith, cursed the town and their descendants for eternity. If you ever happen to find yourself in Paisley, this will explain a lot.


	5. when we were new at this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "With a few months to go before the summer holidays, Mrs. Cackle (she cannot yet bring herself to call the other woman ‘Alma’, despite her urging) calls Hecate and Mistress Balfour into her office with a proposal."

She settles quickly into her new role, and finds that it suits her. Her time with Broomhead has instilled in her a need for order and efficiency that she satisfies by overhauling the Potions store cupboard and the school greenhouses, relabelling and replanting and expanding. She starts legers and lists that Mistress Balfour seems content enough to let her manage, finding her in the gardens every now and then to request supplies or check what she requires for the upcoming week’s lessons. She counts out ingredients and measures their quantities; sets up the Potions lab before every class with exactly what the students will need and how much. She perfects the art of lifting a scathing eyebrow whenever a student is sent to knock timidly on the door of the small dispensary that’s been set up at her behest across from the laboratory, to ask her for more beetle carcasses, because “I crushed mine instead of slicing it,” or pearl dust “because I accidentally knocked mine off the desk when I was stirring anti-clockwise, sorry Miss Hardbroom.”

 

And with the influx of students for the next year, she does become, simply, ‘Miss Hardbroom’, finally occupying a tangible space in the school where up until now she has been not-quite-student, not-quite-staff. It seems to make the girls easier around her, now that they can quantify her, even as their nervous faces peer up at her with requests for more mastic or lady’s mantle. Gradually the older ones come to her not just for ingredients, but for advice - how much aloe does she think should _really_ be in a burn-healing paste, and is it better to use moths or butterflies for a weather manipulation mixture when you want to avoid starting a hurricane? Hecate, who has never considered herself particularly approachable since childhood, is surprised, but she tries to help anyone who comes asking, even as she chases them out of the greenhouses with a firm scolding, or takes a minute at the start of one of Mistress Balfour’s classes to berate them for the state they keep leaving the cauldrons in. She supervises them into Hollow Wood to source flora and soil and insects, while Alma Cackle watches her interactions with them discreetly.

 

When she is not occupied with work, she reads; voraciously and with an enthusiasm for practically every subject she can find, at first. She is well-versed in most of the textbooks on Spell Science and Magical Botany and Broomstick Physics, of course, but she reads other advanced tomes on Chanting and Astronomy, art and music, as well as historical and contemporary witching fiction. She even borrows from the small but highly informative selection on the shelves behind the librarian's desk, reserved for the more forward-thinking sixth years, and blushes her way through them in her bedroom, even as she acquires a rather more in-depth knowledge than their perfunctory sex-education classes in fifth year were set up to provide. Mistress Balfour notices her interest in books, and invites her to borrow anything she likes from her own collection, and Hecate will often collect a small pile from her quarters: a mixture of obscure Potions texts and lyrical poetry and classic fairy tales, and one with a soft, dark cover depicting two beautiful sorceresses that she initially thinks is a mystery novel, and which she places down carefully after an hour while she reassess everything she thought she knew about old Bernadine Balfour. She still dreams about Pippa, but they’re rather more comprehensively detailed these days _._

 

Two years go past almost without her noticing. She works and reads, takes care of the greenhouses in which she grows both curriculum-mandated plants, and seeds that the Potions mistress acquires for her at her shy request. The department has become easily the most effectively run in the school, and Mrs. Cackle, a true administrator, delights in the spending reduction that results in monitoring their ingredients more closely. She pays Hecate a salary despite her awkward protests, insisting that the rest of the staff receive wages on top of their lodgings and meals, and Hecate is no different. She puts some of the money aside, and the rest she spends on mainly practical things: a few new dresses - plain and black and long-sleeved, with loose skirts comfortable enough to kneel and garden in; subscriptions to academic journals that interest her; a better cauldron for conducting her own experimental brewing; a few beautifully illustrated botanical prints that she frames and hangs on her bedroom walls. Looking for a wider range of reading material than is available in the Cackle’s Library, and too embarrassed to ask Mistress Balfour directly, she notes down the details of the postal book club from the back of the definitely-not-a-mystery novel, and orders a few from the same writer, and later some similar authors. She hides them at the back of her bookshelves behind serious tomes on Arcane Runes and Witchery in the Middle Ages. Her room comes to look less like a teenage student’s boarding-school bedroom, and more like a space she can properly call hers.

 

With a few months to go before the summer holidays, Mrs. Cackle (she cannot yet bring herself to call the other woman ‘Alma’, despite her urging) calls Hecate and Mistress Balfour into her office with a proposal.

 

“You remember the potions summer camp you attended in your first year?”, she asks Hecate, who nods tentatively. “I believe you found it quite enjoyable. What would you think about us piloting a similar venture here, at the Academy?”

 

Mistress Balfour contributes enthusiastically as Mrs. Cackle outlines her plans for the endeavour, leaving Hecate to sit blinking in surprise as she processes the idea. They’ll set up in the Academy grounds, Mrs. Cackle proposes, providing the weather holds - have outside classes on plant management and ingredient sourcing, and workshops on revising basic potions and experimenting with new variations. They can use the lab, and the greenhouses, and pepper in other cross-curricular activities  from Witchory and Spell Science. Three weeks should do it, with the students and teachers being housed in the empty Cackle’s rooms. They’ll invite girls from their own school, naturally, and from Amethyst’s and Amulet’s, and Ellerbrock and Havenwood, and engage a few teachers from neighbouring academies so they’re getting a good range of methods and experience; if the pair of them could draw up a proposed itinerary, and Hecate could take care of the risk assessments et cetera, she’ll pop the plans off to OFWITCH for approval. Hecate follows Mistress Balfour from the office, slightly overwhelmed and twitchy at the thought of opening the castle to so many strangers.

 

She doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, though, as the camp is rapidly approved and preparations are ramped up to full-speed as they hurtle towards the end of term. There are final exams to take care of as well as planning for the summer, and Hecate finds herself pulled in a thousand different directions, falling into bed exhausted every night after dinner, until, quite suddenly, it is the second week in July and they are invaded by twenty excited, chattering girls of between twelve and fifteen, of whom Hecate recognises only six. She, Mistress Balfour and Mrs. Cackle are the only indigenous staff in attendance, along with Mrs. Drill, who has stayed behind for the first week to offer some broomstick flying activities. The Potions teachers from Amulet’s and Havenwood are there too, having been keen to involve themselves, and a wizard from Hazeldean College because, Hecate fumes silently, wizards can never resist sticking their noses into anything.

 

Her own role is that of primary facilitator (Mistress Balfour affectionately chides her for using the term ‘dogsbody’), running between workshops and stores and generally keeping an eye out for trouble. She is not, however, the only junior member of staff present, much to her surprise. The Potions mistress from Amulet’s brings with her a girl of about Hecate’s age, who turns out to be a student teacher on her probationary year, looking to get as much experience as possible before she’s handed a class of her own. Her name is Evanora Arrowroot, and she is pretty, and open, and friendly, and has altogether a temperament that Hecate suspects will make for an excellent teacher. She mistakes Hecate for another trainee at first, and seems unfazed when Hecate blushingly corrects her. They form a sort of alliance of eye-rolling and quick smirks as they are sent hither and yon around the castle and the grounds for the teachers, and share exasperated commentary on the overposturing confidence of the wizard in their midst. She stays behind most of the time to help Hecate clean up and reset for the morning, and chats amicably about her interests in potions and chemistry, while Hecate tries her best not to be too stilted or stuttering in her replies, and Hecate finds herself looking forward to her company.

 

In later years, Hecate would love to be able to look back on their last few days of the camp with an amused fondness at her own naivety; a world-weary sigh, and a resigned “ _It was inevitable, really."_ In truth, when Evanora kisses her the first time under the canopy of the open-sided marquee on the front lawn, Hecate is so shocked she freezes in place and makes an undignified squeak where Evanora presses her mouth to hers. The other witch pulls back, laughing, teases her for being so easily startled, and Hecate grips one edge of the long workbench behind her and stares at her, owl-eyed at flushed red. Evanora leans in towards her again, and Hecate grips the wood of the table even tighter to stop the trembling of her hands, but she lets her bring her lips gently to her own, and lets her eyes flutter closed. She lets her tangle their hands together while she breathes “ _I really like you, Hecate,_ ” against her ear, and lets her draw her away from the gardens and up through the castle to the borrowed room in the teacher’s corridor where she’s spent the last fortnight. Hecate’s not sure she could even remember the way to her own room right now. She is excited and terrified in equal measure (well, perhaps slightly more terrified, on balance), keyed-up by the sudden physical closeness and opportunity for intimacy that she’s never really considered an option. Evanora detects her nerves quickly, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind Hecate’s ear. “Never done this before?”, she asks curiously, and Hecate blushes, shame-faced and tries to pull away. “It’s alright,” Evanora soothes her, tugging her back towards her by their joined hands. “We can take it slowly. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” She kisses Hecate again, and then draws back, eyes serious. “Or we could stop, if you want?”

 

Hecate teeters on the edge of a decision for a moment, caught between wanting and agitation, feelings a confusion of fear and arousal and determination and mortification, and the thought that, when she’d imagined this (and she _has_ imaged this, even as she thought it was all she’d ever do) it was a different witch who stood before her, who slipped her arms around her, who murmured in her ear.

 

She flings the image forcefully to the back of her mind and surges forward to kiss Evanora defiantly, and the other woman laughs into her mouth. “Gentleman it is, then,” she hums, and her fingers find the buttons of the dress at Hecate’s nape.

 

It’s fumbling, and a little awkward, and they both end up giggling at some point, and Hecate’s pretty sure neither of them comes, but it’s also nice, and ridiculous, and afterwards she doesn’t feel as different as she supposed she’d expected to, but still it feels like an unconscious barrier has been breached. The end up in bed twice more before the final day of the summer camp arrives, and when all the students have been packed off to waiting parents and the teachers have retired to the staff lounge to crack open a bottle of gin to their success, she and Evanora sit on one of the benches lining the castle walls and regard the now-empty gardens peacefully. “I’ll mirror you,” Evanora says, “Let you know how I’m getting on, see how you’re doing. Merlin knows where I’ll end up next year.” Hecate nods companionably. “You should consider it, you know,” Evanora, says guilessly, meeting Hecate’s questioning glance with a smile. “Teaching. I think you’d probably enjoy it. You were good with them.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of the areas where the students have been working. Hecate waves her off as she leaves for Amulet’s, disappearing into the sky.

 

And she does mirror Hecate a few times throughout the year, and they catch up amicably enough, and when the next summer rolls around and Alma (finally ‘Alma’) organises the potions camp again, there she is, the newly minted Potions mistress for Morrigan’s Academy, teaching interactive workshops on the History of Magic Medicines. It takes them all of three days to fall into bed with each other again, and this time Hecate is less shy, her hands more confident. They have two and a half pleasantly diverting weeks together, in between corralling students into lessons and activities, and then they’re both back to work, and when Hecate gets a mirror call from her in early December telling her about a job she’s been offered in a fledgling magical academy in Australia, she smiles and congratulates her and encourages her to go, genuinely pleased and happy for her. Australia seems incomprehensibly far away to Hecate, who hovers above the castle towers on her broom and charts the boundaries of her world with her eyes. Somewhere she’ll never go, another place she’ll never see. She wonders where Pippa is now; if she’s still in England, or the UK, or if she’s taken up a post somewhere far away too - France or Italy or America. She had loved to travel, Hecate remembers; had invited her on holiday with her and her family time and again and always accepted Hecate’s lie that she was needed home for her Aunt Prudence, never suspected that Hecate spent every holiday drifting aimlessly around in these halls, imagining lying outside with her in the sun.

 

In January, when Hecate receives a postcard from Evanora from Melbourne, she reads it with a smile, places it carefully into the chest at the end of her bed, and closes the lid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm 99% sure I stole the name of Havenwood from thispapermoon, because I have completely lost the ability to differentiate between fanon and canon, so I hope she doesn't mind. OFWITCH was the name of the inspecting body in TWW98 that Broomhead represented, a nod to the English education regulatory body OFSTEAD. Just so you know. ;)


	6. in all my battles, fight as my comrade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Miss Cackle, when she arrives, is a short, well-built woman of about forty, with flaming red hair and a warm smile which does little to distract from her sharp, intelligent eyes."

Hecate is twenty-six the first time she meets Ada Cackle. Mistress Wardwell is retiring, and Alma’s daughter is to take her place as Deputy Head now that she feels ready to move from pure teaching into a more managerial role; Hecate is not naive enough to believe the timing of the two events is entirely coincidental. Ada will take over the Academy when it is Alma’s time to retire, in accordance with the ancient witching traditions of matrilineal primogeniture, so it makes sense for her to establish herself here first (there is another daughter, Hecate knows: a twin, deprived of the rights to the castle by mere minutes, but she is rarely mentioned by the older witch.) She will assume Mistress Wardwell’s Witchory classes, as well, Alma informs them, and she hopes they will all help her settle in, as she hasn’t been to the Academy practically since she embarked on her own career. Miranda Gullet, the Spell Science teacher - a year or two older than Hecate, who had come to Cackle’s straight out of university when their previous appointment had fallen through, and whom Hecate had disliked immediately upon meeting - sneers behind Alma’s back about inheritance and unearned privilege. Hecate leaves her to it.

 

Miss Cackle, when she arrives, is a short, well-built woman of about forty, with flaming red hair and a warm smile which does little to distract from her sharp, intelligent eyes. It’s a week before term begins, and introductions are given in Alma’s office, where the staff - still sluggish and grudgingly relinquishing their holiday-mood - are presented with their new Deputy Head, and Hecate dips a graceful “ _Well met,_ ” before her. When she straightens, the younger Cackle is watching her consideringly, and she knows instantly that Ada has been thoroughly apprised of Hecate’s situation and her presence here at the school. She tenses her jaw, but Ada merely quirks the corner of her lips up at her and returns her greeting, and moves on to speak to Miss Bat.

 

She visits her a few days before the beginning of term in the Potions dispensary, as Hecate is sorting through boxes of vials and organising herself for the week ahead. Ada knocks lightly and sticks her head around the door. “Am I disturbing you?” Hecate blinks at her in surprise, having expected her just to barge straight in; she is the Deputy Head after all, and it is - _will be_ \- her castle. “Um. No.” she manages, clutching the box she’s currently holding to her, protectively.

 

Ada bustles in - _like her mother,_ Hecate thinks, _she doesn’t walk, she_ bustles _-_ and casts an appreciating gaze around the room. “Oh, this _is_ an improvement, isn’t it?” she says, admiringly. “Much better than that half-exploding old store cupboard we had when I was still a girl here. Mother said you’d taken some steps to organise things. You’ve done marvellously.” Hecate continues to stare mutely at her, unaccustomed to such effusive praise from a virtual stranger. Or from anyone, really, she thinks ruefully.

 

“Mistress Balfour says you’re invaluable,” Ada continues pleasantly, poking around a shelf of potted succulents. “She was quite in raptures about how you were her star pupil while you were here and how glad she is to have you around to help her now.”

 

 _She doesn’t have much choice,_ Hecate nearly interjects, but it seems churlish, and she’s still a little off-balance by this sudden incursion of cheerfulness, so she settles for being concise: “Yes.”

 

Ada stops fiddling with the leaves on a Viper’s Bowstring and turns to smile at her, hands clasped. She seems to be expecting something and Hecate wracks her brain for some semblance of small talk she can produce. As usual, she’s been alone in the castle for most of the second half of the holidays, and aside from a few brief exchanges with the returning teachers this week, she thinks she might have forgotten how to talk to people again. Especially new people. It always takes her a little while to adjust.

 

“You weren’t at Selection Day,” she finally blurts out, wincing internally when it emerges sounding more like an accusation than the polite question she’d intended. Ada takes it in her stride, however, and seems unperturbed as she answers, “No, I wasn’t. I had hoped to be, but things took rather longer to get wrapped up at my previous school than I’d anticipated, and besides, I didn’t want poor old Jean Wardwell thinking I was hastening her out the door.” Her eyes crinkle as she continues to smile genially at Hecate, and she feels her shoulders loosen a fraction of an inch.

 

“Oh.”

 

“I shall look forward to meeting the girls, though,” she says as Hecate finally places the box she’s been clutching back onto her work table, and straightens a few of her ledgers. She doesn’t look up, but she can feel Ada’s eyes on her; patient, although she doesn’t know for what. Never one to rush to fill a silence, Hecate busies herself at a cabinet, expects Ada to leave, but she doesn’t - she remains leaning against the shelves, seemingly content to let her gaze wander around the room and take note of the systems of storage Hecate has put in place, until eventually Hecate cracks.

 

“Was there something I could help you with, Miss Cackle?”

 

Ada’s smile widens and she wrinkles her nose with amusement as she says “Not at all, Miss Hardbroom. I just thought I’d pop down and see your domain for myself. That being said, you’ve been down here all morning, and it’s almost lunchtime anyway. Cup of tea?” Ada holds open the door and Hecate starts to stammer an excuse about work she has to do, but the older woman is already gesturing her out and her feet comply before her brain catches up with them, and she’s halfway down the hall before she remembers to lock the dispensary door with a flick of her fingers, Ada already nattering good-naturedly in her ear.

 

***

 

“They said you’d chuck me out in under two minutes,” Ada tells her, weeks after, taking a bite of her custard cream, eyes twinkling with laughter. “That you’re like a dragon defending its horde when it comes to the potions stores, and that you can’t abide chit-chat. I said you seemed far too polite and nice, and would take pity on me because I was new.”

 

Hecate gapes at her over her teacup, and her indignation must show plainly on her face, because Ada bursts out laughing again and offers her another a biscuit.

 

For her part, Hecate is battling to decide if she should be offended or not. The thing is, she’s used to being laughed at - Merlin knows there were girls in her year who took every opportunity to gang up on her and taunt her whenever Pippa was reliably out of earshot - and it’s not hard to let herself imagine the Cackles and Mistress Balfour and Mrs Drill talking about her and deriding her and hatching a plan to wind her up, except-

 

Except it doesn’t feel like Ada’s _laughing_ _at_ her. They’ve shared cups of tea and idle conversations at break times frequently since term started up, and there’s a conspiratorial tone to her amusement that suggests that somehow _they’ve_ won - she and Ada - by proving the others wrong, and Ada’s just called her _nice,_ and she’d said that Balfour told her Hecate was _‘_ indispensable’ _,_ and somehow...somehow there’s been a great joke, and she’s in the middle of it, but it’s not at _actually_ at her expense. She being teased, she realises, but gently, and she huffs, slightly miffed.

 

“Just because I won’t entertain _their_ inane chattering and sticky fingers,” she supplies archly, before remembering that Ada’s mother is one of the _they_ and she probably shouldn’t speak that way about her employer, but Ada’s laughing in earnest now and raises her teacup in salute.

 

“I promise to keep my own chattering as sensible and to the point as I possibly can,” she replies, smiling, and they lapse into companionable silence for a few moments until she continues, “although there are some in my last school who will tell you that’s a tall order.”

 

Hecate takes another sip of tea and tilts her head questioningly. “You were teaching up north, weren’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Ada affirms, dunking her custard cream, “Cailleach Academy, near Inverness. It’s a lovely part of the country;  you should get up there if you ever get -”

 

... _the chance,_ Hecate finishes for her, a perfectly customary casual remark in any normal conversation. But Ada is looking like she could bite her tongue for not catching herself sooner, and her expression is turning apologetic, and that, Hecate thinks, will not do. She will not be pitied.

 

“Their courses would have been slightly different, I imagine?” she steers them, and Ada is happy to pick up the change in direction and ramble for a bit on the variations of the Caledonian curriculum.

 

Hecate listens with half an ear, her mind further away that her body can ever possibly go.

 

***

 

It is Ada too, in the end, who unknowingly echoes the question Evanora had asked her years before at that first Potions Camp: “Have you never thought about going into teaching?”

 

Hecate is stacking chopping boards in the lab, having shooed out the last of the second years who were lingering after class, and she snorts humourlessly. “That would be rather difficult.”

 

“Would it?” counters Ada, and Hecate revolves to look at her disbelievingly, the expression on her face suggesting that perhaps Ada is suffering some unexplained memory loss or fit of particular obtuseness. Ada tilts her chin and stares right back.

 

“There are distance learning courses, you know. Weirdsister offers one, for a start. You could do your post-graduate certificate, and you could do it part-time while you work here. Two years, tops. All the in-class requirements could be fulfilled at Cackle’s as well, and Mistress Balfour could mentor you through your probation.” By the time she’s finished, Hecate’s eyebrows have disappeared into her hairline.

 

“Well, _you’ve_ clearly thought about it, I see.”

 

“I have,” Ada admits freely. “I’ve watched you with the students, and so has my mother, and Mistress Balfour. You’re strict with them, yes, but they respect you, and you clearly know your stuff. I really do think it’s something to consider.”

 

Hecate is torn between surprise and affrontation, and settles for the familiar: “You’ve been _watching_ me with the _students_ …?”

 

Ada sighs, and spreads her hands placatingly. “Look. I know we’ve only know one another for a few months, and you’ve absolutely no reason to listen to my advice, but here it is anyway: I don’t think you want to spend the rest of your life simply doling out the potions ingredients and I think you’d make a good teacher. Bernadine only has a few years to go until retirement, and when that time comes I would like to see someone step into the role who….understands how we do things here, at Cackle’s; who has an investment in this school and its pupils. And when my mother retires and I take over as Headmistress, which will not be in the very distant future, I should think, I would like have a staff who-”

 

“Owes you something”, Hecate interrupts, and Ada frowns at her sternly over the top of her glasses.

 

“Who _I know and can rely on_ ,” she finishes emphatically, as she and Hecate glare at each other for a few, long moments, Hecate still bristling a little from the implication that her job is just ‘doling out potions ingredients.’ Eventually, Ada sighs again, and her expression relaxes into something more forebearing. “Just have a think about it, will you,” she concludes, and lets herself out of the lab. Hecate descends the stairs and sits down heavily in Mistress Balfour’s desk chair, gazing unseeingly into the rows of cauldrons and workbenches in front of her.

 

She had never _planned_ for teaching, truthfully; it had never been her lifelong dream like it had been for Pippa. But then, she’d hardly planned for any of this, she supposes dejectedly - how could she have? And she likes her job here, all things considered, and she’s proud of the work she’s managed to achieve in the past few years but...Ada might be right, she thinks. Will it always be _enough_ , if she’s to spend all her days within these walls? Would it be better to take a more active part in guiding these girls, in shaping the future of witchery at Cackle’s in a way she can no longer accomplish outside? Teaching has always seemed to her like it should be the purview of the Pippas and the Evanoras of the world, with their gentle, nurturing temperaments sitting comfortably alongside quick, intelligent minds; the kinds of teachers she could have hoped for, if she’d known back then. She thinks of Broomhead and a sick knot forms in her stomach - what if she turns out more like…? She pushes the thought away, and brings a hand to her temple.

 

But what if she could stop it from happening again, she wonders suddenly, and something sparks in her chest, hot and nervous. What if she could make sure no other girl ever ends up in the grasp of a Mistress Broomhead, paying for a foolish mistake she made when she didn’t know any better, when she didn’t understand how the rules were there for a _reason_ . Indigo’s stone face dances behind her eyes. What if she could take that rigorous control and regard for order that Broomhead had instilled in her (too late, _too late_ ) and show them how, with care and a healthy respect for the _rules_ , they can avoid ending up the way she has, making the errors she has made.

 

Her tumultuous introspection is interrupted by the squeal of hinges, and a hurried “Sorry, Miss Hardbroom!” as a pale, fifth-year face pokes around the door and quickly ducks back out again. Hecate rises sharply, breathing out to steady herself, pressing her hand against her stomach until she settles. She collects the chopping boards, sends the knives to the kitchens for washing, and retreats to the security of her dispensary, where she resolves to put the notion out of her head for now.

 

On Thursday, when a prospectus for Weirdsister’s Distance Learning courses appears unbidden on her desk, she opens it determinedly, and begins to read.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I feel like Janet from TGP, adding a fun fact at the end of all my chapters.) Fun fact! A cailleach is a mythological hag in Celtic mythology, a creation and winter goddess-slash-witch with the appearance of an old woman who rules the months between Samhain and Beltane. For non Gaelic/Scots/Irish speakers, the pronunciation of 'cailleach' is best achieved by trying to cough up a hairball and sneeze at the same time.


	7. bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hecate is to have direct charge of the junior years under Mistress Balfour’s supervision, and assist with the upper-school classes as well continuing the potions stores. 'And then next year, you can have the lot of them,’ the old witch informs her cheerfully, ‘While I bugger off to Málaga to spend my remaining years somewhere sunny and with better food.'"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reference to 'burnout' at the start of this chapter is a call back to my absolute favourite Constance Hardbroom moment from TWW98, where Miss Cackle is trying to talk to her about stress, and she indignantly insists "I sleep most nights! Six hours at the weekend!" (http://nike-sga.tumblr.com/post/183485136685/mine-eyes-desire-you-i-sleep-most-nights-6)

She qualifies in year, studying full-time while continuing to work only nominally reduced hours, despite Alma and Ada’s stringent protests. After years of Broomhead’s tutelage, the pace hardly taxes her, even as Ada warns her of _burnout_ and _work-related stress._ She attends lectures and tutorials via mirror, and converses with her course leader in the same manner; receives and returns assignments by mail; sits in on the first-year potions classes to shadow Mistress Balfour several times a week, and is persuaded at great effort to assemble a small band of sixth years she deems trustworthy enough to take on some of her duties in the gardens and the greenhouses. She quickly establishes herself among her fellow students as fiercely intelligent and an indomitable debater on traditional academic practice, and passes each assignment with merit or distinction. She has a designated study group, with whom she participates in a multi-way mirror conference at least once a week - four other witches of varying ages and fields of interest, who discuss their own theories and strategies animatedly, and succeed in drawing out her own (albeit quieter) enthusiasm. One of them, Selene Southill, a dark-haired witch with an eye-watering pedigree, invites her to become a member of the incredibly selective Cauldron Club, for high-achieving witches both student and professional. “A sort of coven, really. We have a monthly newsletter,” she smiles winningly at Hecate through the glass, “You should contribute something for the potions section. And we have meet-ups all over the country, talks and lectures and such. It would be _wonderful_ to have you at one soon.”

 

She demurs gracefully - “Perhaps, when I have more time” - and Selene accepts it without question, but she does join the Cauldron Club, and thrills a little at being a member of something that feels private and elite, and perhaps most importantly, _outside_ . Her social circle, such as it is, has been confined to the Cackle’s teaching staff, supplemented with brief acquaintances with other Potions teachers in the summer, for so long that she basks in the feeling of belonging to something that is hers alone. She devours the first newsletter when it arrives - more of  a magazine, with articles on new ideas about elemental manipulation, difficulties with maintaining strong illusion magics, the alchemical renaissance, opinion pieces, poetry, and pictures of different Imbolc ceremonies and celebrations that members all over the world have attended recently. Immediately, she sits down to write a page on a new potion she’s been working on, something to more effectively counteract the effects of Magical Exhaustion using a mix of powdered cordyceps and rhodiola, fusses over and edits it until she’s happy, and sends it away for submission. A few days later she receives a note from Enochia Wolfsbane, the editor, proclaiming that she _loves_ it and will be including it in next month’s letter. A sensation bubbles up inside Hecate that she hasn’t truly felt since she was Joy, a sort of reassurance in her own self-worth and delight at validation that makes her flush and smile. She schools it quickly back under control, reminding herself that she always takes pride in her work and she doesn’t need someone else’s pat on the head to tell her so, but she retains the sense of contentment nonetheless.

 

The next month, she flips eagerly to the potions section and casts a satisfied eye over her article. It’s perhaps a touch more drily academic than some of the others, but she’s never been someone who’ll go out of her way to use ten words where one will do. They’ve included some beautifully detailed hand-drawn cross-sections of the plants she mentions, and she takes a note of the illustrator’s name - Juniper Merigold - and resolves to contact her to compliment her, and see if she’d be interested in collaborating for more articles in the future. She reads the rest of the newsletter leisurely, skimming through advice for meditative ritual preparation and questions on the limits of voiceless spell-casting. Turning a page, she comes to a new chant, in the modern style, for welcoming Ostara, and her feeling of easiness drops away like a sudden cliff-edge as she catches the author’s name:

 

Pippa Pentangle.

 

 _Of course,_ she chides herself, as she digs her nails into her palms to stop her hands from shaking, a habit of her Aunt’s she had begun to emulate during her time with Broomhead. Of _course_ if there’s a exclusive club of high-flyers and intellectuals and success-stories, Pippa’s going to be a member. She must have been invited when she herself attended Weirdsister, in person unlike Hecate, attracting a flock of followers to her with her clever mind and charming nature.  Hecate’s lost track of her, these past few years; she must be an established chanting mistress by now, in whichever school she’s ended up.

 

Hecate wonders what she looks like now, almost a full decade since she last laid eyes on her olive skin and gold curls and sunshine smile. She wonders if her voice has changed, her face, her hair; if that lingering softness of their teenage years has melted away as it always threatened to, and left her slender and toned and elegant, or if her curves are more defined now, her skin warm and soft, her lips and cheeks still pink and pretty and tempting. Her body’s reaction is alarming in its immediacy, and she closes her eyes and breathes through her nose for long minutes as she aches. It’s not as though she hasn’t thought about Pippa; has thought about her most days ( _and almost every night,_ her traitorous mind whispers), when she’s working or teaching or simply sitting in her room, remembering. Her memories of Evanora have been fuel for her fantasies about Pippa, even as she feels guilty for it she’s played out a hundred reunions in her head. But to have such a sudden, tangible connection with her again knocks the wind right out of her.

 

If she’s seen Pippa’s piece, then it stands to reason Pippa’s seen hers. What would her reaction be? she asks herself. Would she feel it as viscerally as Hecate, seeing her name unexpectedly in bold black and white in front of her? Or would she have moved on, and merely shrug it off - _oh, Hecate Hardbroom, I was at school with her -_ and not spare it another thought? Neither answer brings her any comfort. She paces, waiting for her heart to return to a normal rhythm, and when it becomes clear that her body won’t settle by the sheer force of her will, she stops fighting it and takes to her bed and comes apart under her own hands, imagining Pippa’s face, and her voice weaving rich and melodic around the words of her chant.

 

When she next talks to Selene, who gushes over her article before Hecate can get a word in edgeways, she tentatively broaches the subject of finding out details of other Cauldronites. Selene looks a little put out, asks her why, and Hecate quickly asserts that she merely wants to write and thank Miss Merigold for her lovely illustrations. “Oh,” Selene replies, mollified. “I dare say the club secretary can give you an address for her if you write and ask her.”

 

So she does, and inquires not only about Merigold, but about Pippa, covering herself with a vague excuse about wanting to open a dialogue about her Ostara chant, and a few days later she receives a message with contact details for both women. Pippa’s are for a school in Hampshire - _Phyllis Pentangle, Head of Chanting_ \- and Hecate loses her breath all over again at the knowledge that she’s barely three hours away from Cackle’s.

 

Hecate is distracted all the next day, snappish with the older students, and when Mistress Balfour queries her gently on it, she ducks her head, shame-faced, and claims a headache. She doesn’t write to Pippa - doesn’t know what she would say, after all this time - but she lies in bed at night and closes her eyes, reaches out with her magic through the miles between them and imagines she can feel Pippa’s presence, warm and bright and steady, meeting her out there in the dark.

 

***

 

The next summer, as the staff return from their holidays to prepare for the new term, she sits with Mistress Balfour and develops the timetable and curriculum for the first- and second- year potions classes. Hecate is to have direct charge of the junior years under Mistress Balfour’s supervision, and assist with the upper-school classes as well continuing the potions stores. “And then next year, you can have the lot of them,” the old witch informs her cheerfully, “While I bugger off to Málaga to spend my remaining years somewhere sunny and with better food.”

 

Her first class is probably the most nerve-wracking thing she’s ever done, and she’s not sure if the new first years, who peer at her anxiously over their high-workbenches, are more terrified of her or her of them. They’re so _small_ , and fragile, and there are a hundred different things in this room alone that could blow them all sky-high if they’re not careful, so she teaches them care, and concentration, and tries not to be too hard on them (although she suspects she sometimes fails).

 

Her long skirts are impractical for working in an environment so liable to suddenly throw up sparks and embers and occasional whirlpools in her direction, so she orders dresses of thicker material that are more form-fitting, covering her from head-to-toe, with higher collars so very little of her skin is exposed. Gradually, she begins to feel more at ease in the classroom, and she mirrors the other Weirdsister witches regularly, so they can all share horror stories about their first placements. Her students are, fortunately, mostly respectful and well-behaved. Mrs. Drill’s round-faced, boisterous daughter is in one of her potions groups, and is a notorious fidgeter and what Ada calls an ‘e _nthusiastic communicator_ ’, and Hecate finds herself constantly chasing her away from other student’s cauldrons and telling her to stop talking and _focus_. “Sorry, HB!” she chirps one afternoon, as she dashes back to her seat, and becomes the proud recipient of Hecate Hardbroom’s first ever detention. She’ll settle down, Hecate consoles herself - the girl doesn’t have a malicious bone in her body, she’s just high-spirited and too forward, and if she doesn’t...well, she only has to put up with her for a few years and that’ll be that.

 

When the October edition of the Cauldron Club newsletter is delivered, there’s a small section at the end detailing all the members who have graduated from university courses this year, and where they’ve ended up. Some are in research positions, or working for a branch of the council, and some, like Hecate, are in teaching. She finds her name above Selene Southill, History of Witchcraft, Ravenscroft Arcane Academy _\- Hecate Hardbroom, Potions, Cackle’s Academy for Witches_ , and allows herself a smile. A few days later, a card appears in her pigeonhole before dinner, the handwriting on the envelope painfully familiar, and she stares at the simple rendering of a smoking potions bottle filled with bubbling green liquid on the front, before she tentatively opens it with clumsy fingers.

 

_Dearest Hecate,_

 

_Congratulations on your new position. Wishing you all the best,_

 

_Yours,_

 

_Pippa._

 

This time, she doesn’t let herself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't remember who on tumblr suggested that Dimity was the first person to call Hecate 'HB', but the idea was so delightful that I had to stick to it. I'm also showing about as much commitment to the WW timeline as the writers do, so I'm still working on the premise that present-day Hecate is closer to fifty, and when she says she was confined for 30 years she's rounding it to the nearest decade since she graduated from Cackle's at about 17. Fight me. ;)


	8. who is good will soon be beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sometime into the fourth week, Selene tires of Hecate’s constant excuses and deferrals, and announces that if the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then a hand-picked selection of local Cauldron Club members will jolly well go to the mountain. She barely has time for the quick letters seeking and receiving permission from Alma - who has taken her daughter off on holiday to the Lake District - before Selene and her entourage descend upon the Academy."

As the academic year draws to a close, Hecate sits somewhat glumly on the end of Mistress Balfour’s bed, chin in her hand, as she watches the old witch methodically pack up her quarters in preparation for her departure. Hecate herself had been moved from her familiar, comfortable tower after Ada had started and discovered that she was still being housed in her old student bedroom up a few stairs from her former House corridor. “It’s too small for a start!” Ada had exclaimed, “and the students will be forever badgering you. And there are too many bats!” Alma had admitted that it hadn’t actually ever occurred to her to relocate Hecate, and she swiftly found herself in a larger suite in the teachers’ corridor, with space for her desk, and her cauldron, and two armchairs by the fireplace. It’s nice having her own bathroom, but she does rather miss the bats.

 

“Don’t look so despondent, dear,” Balfour instructs her, as she flicks her wrist and her robes fly from the wardrobe to fold themselves neatly into a weathered brown trunk. “By the time you’re a week into first term, you’ll have forgotten I was even here. Which of these would you like?” She gestures to the piles of books stacked haphazardly on the floor: some potions texts; some general practitioners’ guides; some battered, aged novels. Hecate slides off the bed on to the floor and sorts through them, picking out the useful ones. Mistress Balfour doesn’t want to overburden herself on her way to Spain. She continues chattering mindlessly as she works, emptying drawers and cabinets: “Anything else you take a fancy to, just let me know. Otherwise most of it’s getting the heave-ho. Oh! This is pretty.”

 

Hecate looks up to find the other woman standing with one hand outstretched, a long, gold chain dangling from her fingers. From it hangs a old pocket-watch with a latticework cover, blunt-toothed cogs and wheels visible among red etched Roman numerals. Balfour frowns at it absently. “Can’t for the life of me remember where it came from.”

 

Hecate rises and lifts the fob delicately, letting her fingers trace the fine patterns across its front. The watch is a reassuring weight in her hands, and she feels more than hears the tick, marvels at the way it still runs steadily after being left, forgotten, for so long. She turns it over and sweeps her thumb over the embossed metal of the back, entranced. Before Hecate can register the motion - or perhaps she does it by magic - Mistress Balfour has slipped the chain over her head. “There. It suits you.”

 

Hecate closes her fist around the watch even as she stammers, “Wh-what? No, I can’t-”

 

“Nonsense,” Mistress Balfour has already resumed motioning items into the trunk. “You keep it. It’s a present.”

 

She says it so casually, off-hand, but Hecate swallows thickly. She’s not used to presents. Before her parents had passed she’d had a few, on her birthdays - mostly practical things like history books and early magic primers - but since then only one person had ever acknowledged her birthday, or given her little mindings for no reason at all, and she-

 

She banishes the thought of Pippa before it even has time to fully form, and dips her head to Mistress Balfour. “Thank you.” The old witch smiles obliviously, and keeps packing.

 

That night, as she settles down to sleep, Hecate places the watch on her bedside cabinet and listens to it _tick-tock_ into the early hours, when she eventually drifts off to sleep. Something in her had wondered if she’d find the noise suffocating, an audible reminder of the hours and minutes and years she’ll spend in this castle, but to her surprise it comforts her, its beat steady and safe and dependable.

 

Only in the morning, when she thinks to open it, does she discover it has no hands.

 

***

 

As usual, Potions Camp takes up the first three weeks of the summer holidays in full, although this time Hecate is there in her capacity as Cackle’s Potions Mistress, and as such is leading workshops alongside the other academies’ teachers, rather than clearing and restocking. To her surprise, this doesn’t seem to come as much of an adjustment to the more seasoned educators, and Amulet’s Head of Potions even goes so far as to confess that she’d thought Hecate was a teacher the whole time (which, frankly, gives Hecate pause when it comes to the other woman’s observational skills.)

 

Sometime into the fourth week, Selene tires of Hecate’s constant excuses and deferrals, and announces that if the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then a hand-picked selection of local Cauldron Club members will jolly well go to the mountain. She barely has time for the quick letters seeking and receiving permission from Alma - who has taken her daughter off on holiday to the Lake District - before Selene and her entourage descend upon the Academy. There are eight other witches in attendance, all from various professions and specialities of the craft, among them Miss Juniper Merigold, of Hecate’s first Cauldron Club article.

 

They stay for a week, taking up residence in empty rooms, and Hecate finds herself reeling from so much _adult socialising_ , acclimated as she has become to the constant presence of children and adolescents at such times when she is not entirely on her own. If she appears outwardly overwhelmed at first, none of the other witches mention it, although Selene delicately checks one night that she’s not _too_ cross with her for bringing everyone here, is she? It was only she _so_ longed to meet Hecate _in person_ after all this time, and have her meet some really _interesting_ people. And Hecate is forced to admit that there is something rather thrilling at finally being face-to-face with this woman with whom she’s shared so many long mirror talks. Selene is tall and lean and striking, with pale green eyes and an easy elegance, every inch the traditional dark enchantress, with an innate confidence that comes from being a noted descendant of the Shipton line. She commands the room, and Hecate is happy to let her, glad to be spared the role of attentive hostess even if this is, for the moment, her castle. The rest of the collective seem content to convene each day in pairs or small groups that witches drift to and from like butterflies, walking the grounds or reading or discussing recent discoveries in the fields of magic, and Hecate finds she can participate in the conversations as much or as little as she likes. Mostly she is satisfied to just sit and listen, occasionally interjecting a thought or opinion, sometimes being drawn into fierce debate when the subject delves into one of her specific areas of interest. She shows them her Potions lab and her greenhouses, accepts their compliments and displays of interest, listens to one of the women espouse the virtues of the castle’s architecture, another compare the curriculum with her own current training program for young witches in alternative education. Overall, the time passes far more pleasantly that she had feared, and she wonders if this is what it would have been like if she’d had the opportunity to move in these circles, to attend Weirdsister College, to spend time at talks and lectures and salons. If this is what she could have had, if she’d been allowed to leave. If this is what Pippa has had.

 

If this is what she could have had with Pippa.

 

“You’re looking rather pensive.”

 

Hecate starts, looking up from where she has been seated staring into her half-empty glass of witches’ brew, and into the smiling but inquisitive face of Miss Merigold.

 

“Am I?”

 

The other woman drops down onto the settee beside her. She is blue-haired and bespectacled, dressed in a mixture of tie-dyes and clashing colours that would have driven Hecate from ever making her acquaintance had she not already seen how exquisite her work is.

 

“You must be looking forward to having the place to yourself again.” Merigold gestures with her head to indicate their surroundings. They’ve ensconced themselves for the evening in one of the comfortable downstairs common rooms reserved for the upper-school girls, and witches are reclining on couches and armchairs or on the rug in front of the open fire, reading and drinking and murmuring conversationally to each other. Hecate lets her mouth curl into a half-smile.

 

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve rather enjoyed the company.”

 

Merigold raises her eyebrows. “Selene said she’d thought you were desperate to avoid us. Says you’ve turned down every invitation she’s given you so far.”

 

Hecate shrugs, awkwardly. “I...I’m just more comfortable here.”

 

“You don’t strike me as much of a homebody?”

 

Hecate swallows the rest of her drink, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation is taking. Merigold must sense her demeanor, because she changes tack, and carries on, “Frankly, I’m surprised that Selene didn’t bring an army of Club members with her. She was planning on inviting half the country at one point. I’m not sure how she whittled it down, but I’m glad I made her shortlist this time, anyway. Maybe next time you’ll get a whole new set of faces she’s just _dying_ to introduce you to.”

 

She smiles at Hecate as she imitates Selene’s low, society drawl, but Hecate has suddenly gone cold. It hadn’t occurred to her, in the rush of organising the Cauldron Club’s visit, that she’d had no idea _who_ Selene might have invited to Cackle’s. Had never crossed her mind that Selene could have - might very well have _-_ invited Pippa. Brought Pippa here, to see her. And would Pippa have come, if she had? Surely, as a rising star in modern magical circles, she would be exactly the kind of person to catch Selene’s eye, her interest. She tightens her grip on her glass as a tremor shakes her hands at the thought of greeting these women on the lawns at Cackle’s, of watching them appear out of the sky, of catching a flash of blonde hair and brown eyes and recognising, as she brings her broomstick into land, her longed-for, familiar face. Part of her feels ill at the thought, while another part is filled with a terrible sort of retrospective yearning and disappointment.

 

“Hecate?”

 

She snaps back to herself, shaking her head as if to physically loose the thoughts from her mind. “Sorry,” she replies. “No, of course. I’m...I was glad she brought you. I’d been meaning to thank you for the beautiful illustrations you provided for my article on the regeneration potion.”

 

Merigold beams at her, pleased. “Not at all! I thought it was fascinating! And I do love the opportunity to draw botanical diagrams....”

 

She continues advocating the virtues of illustrating various herbs and plants as Hecate refocuses herself, and is eventually able to contribute to the conversation with thoughts of her own and explanations of some of the potions and herbology theories she’s currently working on. They refill their drinks as Merigold enthusiastically posits the idea of Hecate’s writing a book and her providing the illustrations, and discuss increasingly elaborate potential ideas for the project, and Hecate finds herself getting quite caught up in the notion. She’s caught up, too, when several glasses of witches’ brew later, flushed and relaxed and amenable, her companion suggests they go outside for some fresh air to counter the wine. She’s no longer twenty-four and inexperienced and quite so shy, so it comes as less of a surprise when she finds herself pressed up against the castle wall in the dark shadows of an alcove, Merigold’s hands at her waist and her tongue demanding entry at her lips. Hecate leads her upstairs and fucks her, because she is attractive, and clever, and _here_ \- and perhaps, most importantly, because she is so unlike either Hecate or Pippa, and she is able to lose herself in the mindless indulgence of it all for a while. In the morning, Juniper grins at her as she pulls her tunic over her head and says, “We really should discuss that book, sometime.”

 

When they are leaving, Selene presses a kiss to Hecate’s cheek and extracts a promise from her that they _will_ do this again, if Hecate is so determined not to come to any of their other meetings for the time being. Hecate surprises herself a little by agreeing - provided Alma is alright with it of course - because all things considered, she actually has enjoyed the week. “One thing, though,” she caveats. “Next time you let me pick the guests. Or, at least have a say.”

 

“Ugh,” Selene laments. “Who did you hate?”

 

“No-one!” Hecate assures. “It just...it would prevent any potential awkwardness.”

 

“Who did you sleep with? No, don’t tell me,” Selene waves a hand imperiously, and Hecate can’t deny the implication even as she wants to explain that it’s not her reasoning, but Selene is securing her hat to her head and commanding her broom to hover. “Whatever makes you happy, darling. I’ll mirror you in a few days? Thanks for having us!” She bestows one last smile on Hecate, and then she and the rest of the Cauldronites are lifting into the sky, calling back and waving. Hecate watches them out of sight.

 

When the castle is hers alone again, she drifts up to her room and settles on her bed with a notepad and a pen and Morgana curled at her knee. She begins drafting an outline - an elementary potions book, she thinks, something that could maybe one day take the place of some of the dreary and outdated textbooks she finds herself teaching from, something with intricately detailed drawings from Miss Merigold. As she works, she reaches across to her bedside table and slips Mistress Balfour’s pocket-watch over her head, settling it against her chest. She wraps her left hand around it, the cool metal pressing into her palm, and feels it tick

 

_tick_

 

_tick._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Hecate having gatherings at Cackle's during the summer was one that came up on tumblr, and was also the plot of twtd's Hecate 'Sex Master' Hardbroom's Summer Camp fic, _And She Only Looks Like You in a Certain Kind of Light_ (https://archiveofourown.org/works/18282896) which everyone should read at least five times.


	9. i prayed this word: i want (part one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "'It’s a concert for the Great Wizard’s inauguration,' Ada tells her, wafting the invitation in front of Hecate’s nose, 'for all the staff, at each of the academies. I think you should come.'"

Her thirtieth birthday catches her by surprise, somewhere in between writing orders for new seedlings and organising the fifth-year potions study groups. It’s not until several days after the fact, truthfully, that she remembers, and it freezes her in the middle of her classroom for a moment, her hand mid-way to the dented cauldron that a second before had led her to think _‘We need new equipment; some of this apparatus is older than I am.’_ She lets her fingers alight gently on the cast iron rim, and swallows, staring unseeing into its murky depths.

 

She’s never had a birthday party, of course, and certainly not for any of the years people tend to consider ‘milestones’ - sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one - so this one should feel no different, and in a way it doesn’t, not really. The event itself never held much interest for her past her childhood; the only celebrations she observes are the ones laid out by her craft and the turning of the Wheel of the Year. But there’s a pang, all the same, as she thinks about what it means. She’s achieved a great deal already, she knows: she has her degrees, and her work; has her position as Head of the Potions Department in a well-respected institution; is published regularly by the Cauldron Club and is close to having her own first book printed and produced. There’s Potions Camp, and the Cauldronite meetings that take place when she and Selene Southill can corral a few people together during a long-weekend or a school holiday. Her years have not been wasted, and she’s pleased by where she has ended up, given the circumstances. But she’s still so _young_ \- by witching standards especially - and she could have another hundred years left to her, another whole century of existence still to come.

 

Is it all to be experienced within these castle walls?

 

A sigh eddies from her lips as she curled her fingers over the smooth metal of the cauldron. She thinks of the times she spent here as girl, and the other witches who populated these long benches and tables. What’s become of them? she muses, the young women she last saw dwindling into the distance as their brooms took them up and away from Cackle’s. Have they ended up where they hoped to be?  Grown-up and successful and out in the world? And what would she have wanted to do, have chosen to do, if she’d ever really had the choice? She thinks, again, for the thousandth time, about Pippa. About how all she’d ever wanted was to teach; and how she, Hecate, has fallen into it because there was, in the end, so little option. She is not an instinctive nurturer, like Pippa. She knows she is strict, and that the students find her intimidating, despite how hard she tries to keep Broomhead’s bite from her voice, and her sneer from her mouth, and her vicious sting from any of her reprimands. She hopes she is fair, and worries that she is too demanding, in her constant quest to make them _careful_. She wonders what Pippa would make of her, and the kind of teacher she is. She thinks of their articles sitting side-by-side in the Cauldron Club newsletter, and wonders if Pippa ever seeks to understand Hecate by the things that she writes, the way Hecate consumes every word of Pippa’s with a hopeless desire to know who she has become.

 

Thirteen years since she last saw her. She has been without Pippa twice as long as she had known her. It hurts to contemplate.

 

She wonders.

 

Hecate shakes herself out of her melancholy with a sudden spike of inward anger, the likes of which she hasn’t felt in some time. Reproach curdles through her veins and burns the base of her throat like acid. _No._ Who is she to wallow, _how dare she_ wallow in pity over her lost chances and long future when her own stone prison is so much vaster and more fulfilling than the one she had inadvertently created for Indigo Moon. Indigo, who will never see another birthday, let alone have an education and a home and a job, or friends or colleagues or _anything._

 

She whirls away from the cauldron, hand coming up almost instinctively to twist in a gesture that separates the atoms of her being like smoke, and reassembles  her in the middle of the woods in the place she has come to know so well. Her breathing is unsteady as she stands, stiff, fingers curling and uncurling into her palms, and gazes at the stone visage of the little girl who was her friend.

 

It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of her, she tells herself. What she could have done or could have been or wanted to be. She is a teacher, and this is the kind of teacher she is:

 

one who will not let this happen again.

 

***

 

Rain beats against the staffroom window in late February, and grey clouds hang heavy over the horizon as Hecate stirs her tea, watching as Ada produces a scalloped-edged rectangle of ivory card from the depths of a cardigan pocket.

 

“It’s a concert for the Great Wizard’s inauguration,” she tells her, wafting the invitation in front of Hecate’s nose, “for all the staff, at each of the academies. I think you should come.”

 

For all Hecate has developed good working relationships with almost all of her colleagues (always exceptioning that awful Gullet woman), Ada Cackle is the only one Hecate would honestly say she considers a _friend._ Since she assumed her position at the school, Ada has taken the time to try to get to know Hecate, and she finds that she responds to Ada’s genial nature, and sharp mind, and frequently wicked sense of humour. She’s been good for the academy since she arrived, a more approachable counterpoint to her no-nonsense mother for the students, and a friendly ear for the staff. She has ideas, Hecate knows; is eager to rise to the challenge of the Headmistressship when Alma finally decides it’s time to step down, and wants to continue to establish Cackle’s as one of the finest traditional witching schools in the world.

 

One thing she is certainly not is stupid, which is what makes their current topic of conversation so discordant for Hecate.

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“I think you should come!” Ada repeats. “I’m going in mother’s stead - she has some...family business to attend to. And Miss Bat is coming, and Miss Tapioca, and I think Mrs Drill if she can arrange to bring Dimity. It’s not every day they inaugurate a new Great Wizard. It might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”

 

“Ada,” Hecate says slowly, as if speaking to a particularly dim first-year, “I _can’t_ go _._ ”

 

“It would be a shame to miss it.”

 

Hecate gapes at her, almost throws her hands up in frustration.

 

“ _Ada_ ,” she stresses, disbelievingly “you know I _cannot go._ ”

 

“Aaah,” Ada says, as if suddenly coming to a realisation about Hecate’s cause for protesting, although Hecate can see from the twinkle in her eye that she’s been goading Hecate to exactly this objection. She smiles, and Hecate feels dizzy at her next words. “Well, you see. I’ve had some thoughts about that...”

 

***

 

“Are you _quite insane?”_

 

Hecate gawks at Ada round-eyed and incredulous, one hand on the cover of the book Ada had dropped onto the tea table between them. They’re in Ada’s rooms, bright and well-appointed, and the tome is from Ada’s own personal library - purchased, she’d told Hecate, when she’d first started considering the limits of Hecate’s confinement. Its cover is a pale, pleasing blue, with the title stamped boldly across the front:

 

_Astral Dynamics: Projections of the Body._

 

“I’ve had a look,” Ada explains, as if Hecate is not looking at her like she’s grown three extra heads, “and it actually doesn’t seem terribly different from transferring. Same basic principles, except you’re moving your astral body instead of your physical one. You have to be in a relaxed state, of course, which might be our first stumbling block.”

 

Hecate nearly chokes, as choice words crowd her mouth and brain and she can’t decide which ones to give voice to first. Of all the issues with this, this...(she hesitates to call it a _plan_ , because that’s giving it too much credence)...this _nonsense,_ her state of relaxation is at the very bottom.

 

“I am _forbidden_ from leaving this castle!” she finally manages.

 

“And you won’t be,” Ada responds equably. “Technically speaking, you’ll still be right here.”

 

“You wish me to risk the wrath of the Great Wizard and the Magic Council on a _technicality_?”

 

“What wrath?” Ada volleys back, leaning forward on her hands. “Egbert Hellibore didn’t pass your sentence. We may even be able to appeal to him to lift it.” Hecate startles violently. _Lift it?_ “Once he’s properly taken office of course. And you wouldn’t be breaking the law, the rules of your sanction never said anything about astral projecting did they? It’s hardly a new concept; if the Great Wizard had been so set against it, he would have provided for it in the terms of your confinement.”

 

Hecate stands upright, hands clenched into fists and stares at Ada in utter disbelief. Ada stares defiantly back at her.

 

Hecate has never met Ada’s twin, the erstwhile Agatha Cackle. She knows there was some unpleasantness between her and her mother and sister when the twins were still at school, and that Agatha had concluded her education at Wormwood Academy, where only the most difficult of behavioural cases are sent. Agatha is the younger twin, and Hecate has heard tell that she is petty and vindictive, roiling with jealousy over her sister’s good fortune to be born those few minutes earlier than she. Ada, people say, is ‘the good one’, warm and kind and pleasant, committed to her vocation and the school, and to whom the plots and machinations of her sister came as a dreadful surprise, so foreign were they to her own nature. Hecate has never believed in the ridiculous concept of a ‘good’ and ‘evil’ twin of course, but she has been willing to accept that Ada and Agatha could, despite their shared upbringing, potentially have such wildly diametric dispositions: that Agatha could be reckless and anarchic while Ada is considerate and careful.

 

Suddenly, she feels less sure.

 

“It may not be against the letter of the law, but surely you can see it is against the very _spirit_ of the punishment!”

 

“Hang the ‘ _spirit of the punishment_ ’!” Ada cries, thumping a hand off the surface of the table. “This is an opportunity to _go out!_ Too see the world again! To be in witching society! There will be thousands of people at this concert, chances are you won’t even be noticed!”

 

“And if I am?” Hecate replies, her voice strained and high and anxious. “They could make my punishment _worse._ I was lucky to be allowed to keep my magic intact!”

 

“ _Lucky!”_ Ada snorts derisively. Hecate feels ill, forcing air into her chest.

 

“I won’t do it.”

 

“You could go in disguise if you’re so worried about it. A glamour, or a potion-”

 

“ _No.”_

 

“You haven’t even thought about it properly!”

 

“I don’t have to!” Hecate bites back, taking a few steps away from the table and shaking her head furiously. “It’s madness. I won’t do it.”

 

“Fine,” Ada barks, crossing her arms defensively. “It was only a suggestion.”

 

Hecate holds her gaze for a few seconds, both of them breathing heavily, and then raises her hand to transfer. The last things she sees as the room dissolves around her are Ada’s narrowed eyes.

 

***

 

When she’s stressed, she snaps at the students. She knows she does it, and every time afterwards, feeling guilty and remorseful, she resolves not to do it again. She doesn’t want the students to be afraid of her - respect her, yes; listen to her; follow her rules and the regulations she has set out for their own safety; but she does not want to cause them to fear her the way she had feared Mistress Broomhead. Still, when she is stressed, she snaps, and hisses at them when they misread an ingredient or overfill a cauldron. The day after her argument with Ada, she dismisses her final class early, a headache clawing behind her eyes, and the girls pale and subdued. When she looks up from her desk it is to see Miss Bat lingering in the doorway, regarding her thoughtfully. Already on edge, Hecate feels her neck and shoulders tighten even further.

 

“Yes, Miss Bat?”

 

The older witch drifts into the room, dark robes trailing behind her, a conductor’s baton behind her ear. “Everything alright, Miss Hardbroom?” she asks. Hecate scowls fiercely.

 

“Perfectly fine, thank you.”

 

Miss Bat nods absently, but Hecate sees the way her eyes scan over her face and take in her tense jaw and the dark circles under her eyes.

 

“The third years said you were rather out-of-sorts, that’s all.” Hecate’s quite sure the third years weren’t so generous in their description, and she resolves to set them all a six-thousand word essay on some obscure topic tomorrow.

 

“Their concern is misplaced, I assure you.”

 

Miss Bat hums in concession, but continues anyway: “Miss Cackle hasn’t been her usual self today either.”

 

Hecate bristles. “Hasn’t she.”

 

“She was in such good spirits yesterday too.” Miss Bat lowers herself to perch on the edge of Hecate’s desk, ignoring the way the other witch’s teeth clench. “She was very excited about this concert the Great Wizard is giving. It’s sure to be a very grand affair, you know.”

 

Hecate absolutely cannot bear to hear another word about this Merlin-forsaken concert, and she stands abruptly and begins gathering the pile of excercise books her class had deposited on her desk on their way out. Unruffled, Miss Bat keeps talking as she watches her. “I’m looking forward to it myself. I’ve been asked to perform a chant in his honour. And most of the other prominent academies will providing some sort of musical representation. Belvoir’s is sending their student choir, so your old schoolmate Miss Pentangle will be attendance too.”

 

Hecate has almost made it to the door, and she feels herself stumble, although mercifully she keeps her grip on the books. Miss Bat’s tone is nonchalant, conveying nothing more than a casual relaying of information, but Hecate thinks of the letter when she was barely eighteen, the record that she still keeps in her room, the hundred times Miss Bat has mentioned Pippa’s name to her in passing over the years. She stares at the flagstones and feels her ears go hot and her chest tighten. Miss Bat rises from the desk with a smoothness that belies her years, and steps nimbly around Hecate to open the door.

 

“After you.”

 

Later, when dinner has been eaten and rounds have been made, Hecate tries to sleep and fails miserably, her mind spinning and her nerves sharp and sick. It’s stupid and reckless and sneaking out of the castle when she wasn’t allowed to was what started this whole awful mess in the first place, and she knows better now (doesn’t she? _doesn’t she?_ ) but the thought won’t leave her alone and nags and nags until she is driven from her bed and finds herself outside Ada’s door at three in the morning. She knocks tentatively, and meets Ada’s sleepy, surprised gaze with determined eyes when she answers.

 

“Hecate?”

 

She pauses, steels herself, takes a deep breath.

 

“How would it work, exactly?”

 

Ada grins.

 


	10. i prayed this word: i want (part two)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Great Hall of the Grand Palace is unlike anything Hecate has ever seen before, outside of paintings and books on baroque and rococo architecture and design. The room is cavernous - the great hall at Cackle’s could fit into it ten times over at least - with extravagantly muraled walls, dramatic allegories of magical history splashed across the room in a blaze of colour and movement."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two chapters were a bit of a bitch to write, so I hope you're all ready for nearly ten-thousand words of my working through my Opinions. Fair warning: Ada fans and stans, this may be your hopping off point.

Hecate winces at the sudden onslaught of noise as she pops into existence on a side-path in the gardens of  the Great Wizard’s Palace. It seems like every witch and wizard in the country is crammed into the grounds, gathering in enormous crowds and waiting to be permitted entrance through the ornate doors that tower in the distance. There is a seething mass of dark cloaks and black hats and brooms, and she catches a glimpse of academy crests adorning several garments: Blackcat and Amythest’s, Havenwood, Morrigan’s and half a dozen more besides. The press of the bodies and the volume of the voices and the glare of the hundreds of coloured lights strung amongst the trees makes her recoils, a sharp panic rising swiftly in her chest. This was a mistake.  _ This was a mistake _ . She knew it, she’d known it from the start, and there are so many  _ people _ , so many strangers, and Hecate is barely comfortable dealing with groups of unfamiliar children a hundredth of this size in the summer, or in the first weeks of term. She feels her muscles clench and her teeth clamp together, and she wonders distantly if her body - her real body, the body that’s currently lying on her bed back at Cackle’s - is reacting physically to her distress, or if the feelings are purely psychosomatic. 

 

After she had relented to Ada’s idea in the face of her foolish temptation to see Pippa Pentangle again, however distantly and however briefly, they had practiced this  _ projection _ around various areas of the castle, always late and always out of sight in case any of the other teaching staff were stalking the halls with an eye for trouble. Hecate had trembled with nerves each time, despite Ada’s cajoling to relax and let her mind drift, to ‘feel the vibrations’ (Hecate had snorted aloud the first time, and Ada frowned at her crossly:  _ That’s what it  _ **_says_ ** _ , Hecate _ ) and find the thin silver cord that bound her astral body to her physical form. Hecate hadn’t even been sure she believed such a thing existed, until the third attempt when, after a long day of second-year exam timetables and detentions and marking, she had been too tired to be frustrated and anxious, and had found herself longing only for sleep. As Ada had continued to encourage her to  _ find a way out of herself _ and her mind had become heavy with exhaustion, she had finally felt it - a tingling in her fingers and her feet, and in her half-hypnagogic state she had followed the sound of Ada’s voice and found herself standing in the room, looking down at her own prone form as Ada clapped her hands together gleefully and said  _ Oh, well done! _

 

A cold shock had overcome her and she’d found herself levering herself up from the floor mere seconds later with no clear memory of how she’d gotten from where she’d been to where she was, and her hands shaking so badly that she’d had to press them into her stomach to still them, and to stop herself from being sick. She’d wanted to stop, then; even her desire to be closer to Pippa than she had been in nearly fifteen years couldn’t stand up to the tide of doubt and panic that flooded her - _it’s wrong, it’s too risky, it doesn’t feel right_ _-_ but Ada had followed her back to her room and soothed her, regarded her with kind eyes and an understanding smile.

 

 _I don’t blame you for being nervous_ , she said, as Hecate fought her unsteady breathing and pounding heart. _This is a big thing for you._ _But you’re doing so well. I’d hate to see you give up now._ She’d placed a hand over Hecate’s, and squeezed lightly. _Think about it. We can always try again tomorrow._

 

And when she’d calmed, wrestling her ridiculous impulse to run back down inside (and where would she go? Hit the perimeter fence again, like she had done at fifteen, and send herself spiraling in pieces into the woods and to Indigo Moon?), she’d slept a fitful, anxious sleep, and woken in the morning with the scent of Pippa’s skin fading from her mind. She’d forced herself out of bed and back to Ada’s door.

 

So they tried again.

 

And again and again, Hecate drilling herself in the moves and the motions and the feelings of the spell, until she can cast her consciousness from her body as easily as she can materialise across the castle lawns, further and further each time, Ada smiling brightly and clapping in delight at her progress. She comes to take almost as much pleasure in pleasing Ada with her performance as she does in mastering the new magic. Sometimes, in those moments, Ada reminds her of Alma in the early days of Hecate’s attendance at Cackle’s, when she’d smile and nod and congratulate her on a job well done whenever she succeeded in whatever test or exam she had applied herself to, and Hecate would flush at the praise of her abilities with an easy, innocent pride.

 

The thought crosses her mind unbidden that perhaps working with Ada - a peer - shouldn’t remind her so much of being a student, but she pushes it away unexamined. Ada is her friend and her colleague, and they all have a tendency to slip unconsciously into their well-worn teacher-roles, she supposes, and the Great Wizard’s inauguration is less than a month away.

 

She thinks she might be ready.

 

***

 

She wasn’t ready, she realises now, could never have been ready for  _ this _ , this press and pull and noise and laughter and music and darkness and light, and she’s about to break the connection, retreat back to her safe, familiar room and warm bed, when a hand lands on her arm and she’s looking down into the smiling face of her Deputy Headmistress.

 

“Alright?” Ada questions, not waiting for an answer as she threads her arm through Hecate’s and pulls her towards the queue of people drifting through the doors. “Gwen got here hours ago, I think she’s in the palace somewhere getting ready. A shame Mrs. Drill couldn’t make it after all, but I understand Dimity took quite the tumble.” 

 

Dimity had fallen off her broom three days before, attempting some elaborate trick or another - no doubt without her mother’s supervision - and had broken her arm in two places. Being the inimitable, robust teenager that she is, Dimity had been unfazed by the break, and Hecate had heard that the mediwitch had healed it up quite nicely, but she’s been feeling a little off with the after-effects of the bone-mending potion. Hecate tries not to think that it probably serves her right. Secretly, she’s relieved Mrs. Drill and her daughter aren’t in attendance; it would have made it even harder to maintain this ridiculous charade to have to explain to the Drills her presence here. Or who, in fact, she is. 

 

And there was the real icing on the cake, she thought ruefully, glancing down at her deep blue dress, skirt clutched in hands that were just  _ slightly _ unfamiliar. 

 

She’d gone to Ada again, a few weeks ago, to confess her second (and third and fourth) thoughts had returned, and that the risk of being seen and recognised and punished was too high, because she doesn’t have to search particularly deeply to know that if she is caught outside of the Cackle’s grounds, in whatever form it may have been accomplished, she is probably not going come out on top from an argument that begins with the words “Well,  _ technically _ …”

 

Ada had once again provided a solution. Standing in the middle of the Potions lab, Ada had gestured effusively towards all of the bottles and vials that lined the shelves and proclaimed that Hecate’s answer was all around her. A glamour or a potion, she’d said, the latter being the easiest way for Hecate to change her physical appearance enough that there would be no chance of suspicion at the inauguration concert. Hecate had had some doubts that magically altering her physical body would work when it came to her  _ astral _ body, but apparently the power of the mind was such that when she took the transformation tincture and watched her reflection shift and shimmer in the mirror, resolving into someone  _ other _ , she could then effortlessly substitute the new appearance for the old when she stepped out into the ether.

 

Which is how she comes to be standing here, in the Great Wizard’s garden, in a body that is almost- but not-quite hers. She looks, she thinks, like she could be distantly related to herself, a second or third cousin if anyone inquires. She asks herself again what she thinks she’s doing. Ada, however, still holding Hecate’s arm, is greeting Araminta Amulet enthusiastically as they meet amongst the masses. 

 

“Cackle!” bellows Miss Amulet, a woman who, to Hecate, seems the living embodiment of the phrase ‘jolly hockey sticks’. “Good to see you! Sorry your mother couldn’t make it!” Ada is smiling brightly and dipping in a bow, hand to her forehead. 

 

“Minty! It’s been a long time. I’m sure mother will be sorry to have missed you.”

 

“What’ve your lot got on?” Miss Amulet inquires, gesturing her head in the direction of the palace. “Our school orchestra’s here. They’re not very good, bless ‘em, but they shouldn’t disgrace us too terribly!”

 

Ada laughs and Hecate half-hears her reply, as she glances anxiously around the crowd. She feels tense and fractious, imagining dozens of eyes on her, seeing frowns of realisation on the faces of the surrounding witches, even though she knows it’s impossible. She curls and uncurls her fingers, then forces herself to stop even that, knowing that the unconscious habit itself would be a dead give-away to the few who know her. Her skin itches, and her dress feels heavy and too tight. She becomes aware of the fact that Ada and Miss Amulet have stopped talking and are looking to her expectantly. Her eyes widen slightly in alarm as she glances at Ada.

 

“I was just telling Miss Amulet that you’re providing temporary supply cover for Miss Hardbroom,” Ada says, meaningfully, and Hecate quickly offers the traditional greeting bow to the other headmistress. 

 

“Well met, Miss Amulet.”

 

“Miss Hemlock,” she replies politely, returning the gesture. Hecate winces internally. Calling herself ‘Hilary Hemlock’ had been Ada’s idea, and when she fretted that it was too close to her real name and might attract comparison, Ada had insisted that its very similarity woud make it easier to remember, and more believable to correct if either of them slipped up. Hecate chides herelf for how raw she feels, being called by a name that is not hers, so much has she come to rely on the shelter of  _ Hecate Hardbroom _ since she adopted the appellation. It’s not like she can use her own name, anyway.

 

It’s a relief when the crowd moves forward again, and they suddenly find themselves before the doors and must separate from Miss Amulet to present Cackle’s Academy’s invitation to the wizard in the entryway. Once it has been verified, they are shuffled forward with the rest of the crowd and into the venue where the concert will be held, and despite her intentions to keep her gaze on the floor and herself inconspicuous as possible, Hecate can’t help the way her mouth drops open in awe, or the gasp that escapes her lips.

 

The Great Hall of the Grand Palace is unlike anything Hecate has ever seen before, outside of paintings and books on baroque and rococo architecture and design. The room is cavernous - the great hall at Cackle’s could fit into it ten times over at least - with extravagantly muraled walls, dramatic allegories of magical history splashed across the room in a blaze of colour and movement. Great twisted columns of marble inlaid with bronze and gold soar up into an enormous, vaulted ceiling from which chandeliers hang like glittering stalactites, and a hundred thousand candles illuminate the room with flames that catch on every piece of golden adornment and gilding, making them glow with a warm, orange lustre. Hundreds of padded and upholstered Queen Anne chairs with elaborately carved backs are lined up facing a raised wooden stage flanked by two magically conjured screens to project the proceedings to the audience in the far reaches of the hall. Young wizards in elegant purple robes are navigating their way through the assembly, floating trays of drinks ahead of them, and offering refreshments to the guests. 

 

Hecate feels a tug on her arm, and turns as Ada pulls her towards a couple of empty chairs, weaving through the congregation. They pass the Potions Mistress from Amythest’s, and Hecate smiles as she meets her eye, then curses for forgetting herself so quickly. The other teacher merely smiles back courteously, puzzled, probably trying to place her. They settle into place with two glasses of champagne - a beverage Hecate is familiar enough with from Selene’s visits to know she’s not a fan - and Ada watches the people around them, pointing the ones she deems notable out to Hecate: other headteachers and potioneers and magical educators. Hecate fidgets in her seat. Eventually, everyone is settled, and the candles dim, and a hush sweeps over the audience. Hecate’s heart hammers in her ears as she directs her attention to the stage.

 

First, of course, they must endure the opening remarks of the newly appointed Great Wizard. Egbert Hellibore has changed surprisingly little in the two decades since Hecate last saw him, standing behind Merlin Langstaff as the old man weighed Hecate’s future in his hands. Hellibore is older, certainly, and heftier, and has a slightly longer beard, but in manner and stance and expression he is the same young wizard Hecate remembers from that awful day, and her throat constricts a little as she watches him. He delivers a longer-than-strictly-necessary speech - a talent belonging to most wizards, Hecate has noticed -  thanking the gathered practitioners for their presence and support, welcoming them, expressing his delight at the forthcoming entertainment so generously supplied by each of the magical institutes in attendance, laying out some of his forthcoming plans for the future of the community. He postures long enough for Hecate to finally relax fractionally, to stop searching for recognition on the faces surrounding her, and by the time the first school’s choir shuffles onto the stage looking overwhelmed, she has loosened her shoulders and settled into her chair enough to take a cursory sip of her champagne and decide that no, she still despises it.

 

They sit through a few rather good musical offerings from various academies and universities until Gwen is announced, and she appears as Esper Vespertilio in rich, green robes, hair elaborately coiffured, and performs a traditional blessing chant for good fortune in honour of His Greatness. For all the times Hecate has heard her sing in the chanting classroom, she has never truly seen her  _ perform _ , and she really is extraordinary. When her song comes to a conclusion, Hecate claps as enthusiastically as the next witch, feeling a warm bubble of pride and affection as the old witch takes her bow and signals the end of the first half of the concert. The Cauldron Club Choral Society kicks off the second part of the evening after a brief interval, and by the time she’s procured a decent glass of red wine and gotten used to the sheer amount of people and the warmth of the room, and listened to her twentieth ode to the Great Wizard, she’s almost forgotten exactly why she’s here in the first place. Forgotten enough that when Belvoir Academy of Magical Arts is announced and their angelic-faced, excitable little choir trips onto the stage, she has neglected to prepare herself for what - or who - will inevitable follow.

 

Pippa strides out confidently onto the stage, and Hecate loses all her breath, barely managing the presence of mind to keep a grip on her wine glass. Pippa is all bronzed skin and golden hair, gleaming brighter and more beautiful than anything else in the lavishly decorated room. She is a lithe figure dressed in pale violet, her arms bare, and her hem sweeping the floor, her dress delicately and subtly beaded around the bodice, and next to her, everything in the hall seems gaudy and overworked. She clasps her hands in front of her and bows in acknowledgement to the audience who are applauding her arrival earnestly; Pippa’s prowess as a Chanting Mistress and chanteuse has made her a popular figure in both academic and society circles, her ideas on modern magic a novelty amongst the conservative upper-classes. She smiles luminously, eyes sparkling, happy and so different from the last time Hecate saw her, tired and resigned in the corner at the Leavers’ Ball that her heart races with unbearable longing, and  _ oh. _ Even after all this time, what she wouldn’t give to rush into her arms and breathe her in and tell her she’s  _ sorry, sorry, sorry. _ That she’s missed her. That she thinks about her, still, and has never been able to stop. It’s lunacy, she tries to tell herself, to feel this way about someone she hasn’t seen for half her lifetime and doesn’t know, not really, not anymore, but her whole soul aches at the sight of her and she wants nothing more than to throw herself at her feet and beg to be let into her life again. A small, desperate part of her had hoped that when she saw Pippa tonight she would realise that she had exaggerated her in her memory, built up her charm, her beauty, to an impossible degree, and she would see nothing but an unfamiliar woman emerge from the ghost of the girl she’d once loved. Looking at her now, she realises that hope was foolish, and far from dulling her feelings, the separation has only sharpened them into a knife point that tears at her skin and leaves her ragged and open in its wake. She cannot look away.

 

Pippa turns gracefully to face her students, and Hecate’s seat allows her a glimpse of her profile as she winks at them and they grin adoringly back at her. She raises her hands, and Hecate watches the muscles of her arms and shoulders shift under her perfect skin until she drops them, and the Belvoir choir breaks into glorious song. She stares at Pippa’s back the entire time she is conducting, and couldn’t have described the music or the chanting  if her life depended on it. Her whole world for these few minutes is Pippa, and her elegant hands; her lovely face and soft, encouraging smile.  _ Pippa, Pippa, Pippa.  _

 

When it is over, Pippa faces the audience again and beams, glowing with pride for her students, and basks for a moment in the applause before she leads them offstage, disappearing into the darkness beyond. Hecate is bereft.

 

She spends the remainder of the concert feeling sick and empty and near to tears, and when the lights finally come up again and Great Wizard Hellibore has thanked them profusely for their attendance, she rises with Ada and makes her way outside without seeing. In the palace foyer, Ada pauses. “Perhaps we should go and find Gwen?”

 

The thought of running into Pippa backstage wearing this face that is not her own and not being recognised, being dismissed out of hand, makes Hecate’s stomach lurch unpleasantly, and she shakes her head. “I’d like to go home.” Ada peers closely at her, a frown that verges on disapproving playing at the corners of her mouth. 

 

“Well, if you’re sure-”

 

Hecate doesn’t wait for further permission before she spins on her heel and hurries as best she can through the crowds and out into the night air. Her head is fuzzy and sore, and she can’t think clearly, and all she wants is to get away to some secluded path or alcove so she can just disappear without someone noticing the lack of a transfer spell. She bumps into an elbow, and murmurs an apology, and the affronted witch hisses at her to  _ mind where she is going _ in a voice that, on top of everything else tonight, makes Hecate feel like she might just faint clean away on the floor. 

 

She looks up into the cold, hard eyes of Mistress Broomhead.

 

The old witch scowls at Hecate as her vision swims with fear and misery, and she stammers another “sorry, I’m sorry, I-” and flees. She pushes her way out of the doors and into the garden and runs, half-blind, back in the direction she had first appeared from, hours ago. As soon as she feels she is even vaguely out of sight, she severs the connection, and comes to on her bed, panting and shaking and her muscles in agony from having lain so long in one position. She forces herself up with a wail not entirely borne from physical pain, swings her legs off the bed, but has no strength to stand. She buries her face in her hands and sobs wretchedly. Morgana twines worriedly around her ankles. 

 

_ Oh, Pippa.  _

 

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, but when she is worn-out and weary, her eyes and throat scratchy and swollen from crying, she raises her head and sees her own face reflected in the mirror. She gets up on shaky legs and crosses to the bathroom, wetting a towel with cold water and holding it against her face. She is exhausted and numb. A knock sounds at her door, and reluctantly, she moves to open it.

 

Ada stands on the other side, and she raises her eyebrows when she takes in Hecate’s appearance. “Oh, dear.”

 

Hecate steps aside to let her come in, and Ada, still wearing her cloak and hat, stands in the middle of her room and sighs. “What  _ happened _ , Hecate?”

 

Hecate hadn’t told Ada about Pippa, when she had agreed to sneak into the Great Wizard’s concert, content to let Ada think that she had convinced Hecate because of the historical significance of the event. She finds she is even more reluctant to share her story now, standing here bedraggled and forlorn, embarrassed by her own lack of control over her wayward emotions and hurting in every imaginable way. Ada sighs again at her lack of response, and folds her arms, shaking her head sadly. 

 

“It’s my fault.”

 

Hecate looks up sharpy, alarmed, upset by the idea that Ada would hold herself responsible for her state. “Ada, no-”

 

“I should have known it was too much for you,” Ada continues. “An unfamiliar castle. All those people. I am sorry Hecate; I just so wanted us to have a night to remember.”

 

“Ada…”

 

Ada steps forward and pats Hecate’s shoulders, and smiles remorsefully, although she can’t hide the disappointment in her eyes. Disappointment in Hecate, although she tries her best to cover it. “No. I should have known better. I hope you can forgive me.” Hecate trembles in distress, but before she can plead with Ada not to blame herself, the other woman is moving away and opening the door. Before she slips out into the hall, she regards Hecate despondently. “Get some rest. Try and sleep. Hopefully you’ll feel better in the morning.” Then she closes the door and is gone.

 

A fresh wave of grief hits Hecate, and tears she would have sworn five minutes ago she no longer had in her wash down her cheeks. She has been stupid, and careless, so caught up in her yearning to see Pippa that she has put herself at risk for a few stolen minutes, and let Ada down with her deficiencies. Running into Broomhead was a sign: if she casts aside her control, her discipline, her  _ code _ , she will do nothing but bring herself to further ruin.

 

In that moment. Hecate vows never to leave Cackle’s Academy again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘Hilary Hemlock’ was the name Imogen Drill gave to herself in the WW98 episode ‘Power Drill’, when Mildred had her first go at granting someone magical powers they couldn’t handle. Similarly, Miss Amulet is really just my nod to the original series Miss Pentangle, who first appeared in ‘The Witchy Hour’, aka The One Where Constance Legit Refers To Herself As Hot-Stuff Hardbroom On Live Radio. She also disappears a man’s chair from under him when he touches her, unsolicited, on the arm. It is just as glorious as it sounds.


	11. i prayed this word: i want (part three)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Shortly before the Yule break, Ada calls Hecate into her office and bids her sit on one of the armchairs by the fire. She makes them both a pot of tea, and sets out a plate of scones and jam, and settles into her own chair with Pendle curled up on her knee. Hecate’s been invited in to the office for tea a few time since Ada became Headmistress, but this time feels different, like she is there for a purpose, and it doesn’t take Ada long to get to it.
> 
>  
> 
> 'I’ve been thinking,” she begins, directly. 'About your confinement.'"

The day Alma Cackle announces her retirement, Hecate doesn’t know what to feel. She is looking forward to the prospect of Ada taking over the academy, knows she has plans and ideas for progressing Cackle’s that she has shared with her over the years, but Alma has been a steady presence in Hecate’s life since she was a small child, as much a part of the school as the stones and mortar, and she finds the notion of her leaving permanently - not just a holiday from which she will return in six weeks, but gone with no firm idea of when she might be back even for a visit - leaves her jittery and upset. Miss Bat must sense her disquiet, because she pauses in the hall one day, to squeeze Hecate’s elbow and smile, and say “Don’t worry, dear. You’ve still got me!” Hecate rolls her eyes and tuts and flounces off, but secretly she’s grateful, and she knows the old bat knows it.

 

She sits quietly through Alma’s farewell assembly, grits her teeth as some of the older girls sob and sniffle in a typical display of teenage dramatics, especially the ones she knows have have muttered and scowled behind Alma’s back for most of their student careers. On the last day before the holidays, Alma gathers them all in the staff room and thanks them sincerely, getting somewhat choked-up herself, and Ada hugs her mother tightly when she’s done. As the staff disperse to gather their things and leave the grounds, Alma calls after her gently in a way that stops Hecate in her tracks.

 

“Joy?”

 

Hecate closes her eyes and swallows before turning back to her. Alma hovers uncertainly for a moment, and Hecate thinks that she might try to hug her, but eventually she just takes one of her hands and holds it for a moment, looking at her with watery eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever said this but-” she looks away, giving herself a moment, and Hecate’s heart thumps nervously in her chest. Alma meets her gaze again. “I’m very proud of you, you know. What you’ve made of yourself here, despite...despite everything. Very proud.” Hecate stares at her, dumbfounded, as Alma nods and drops her hand, giving her a sheepish smile. “Well, anyway. I’m sure you’ll continue to do just fine.”

 

“Thank you, Mrs. Cackle,” Hecate replies, softly.

 

Alma smiles again, and bustles out of the room, leaving her standing alone and astonished, with a heavier heart than she expected.

 

***

 

Ada doesn’t leave the castle that summer, too energised with preparations for commencing her tenure as Headmistress. Once the annual activity of Potions Camp is over, Hecate finds it odd to be sharing the castle with someone else for the last few weeks of the holidays. She’d put the Cauldronites off for this year, aware that Ada might not want a group of strangers meandering around the academy while she organises herself for the forthcoming term, but curiously, Hecate feels more claustrophobic with just Ada in the vast castle that she usually does with a group of twenty.

 

She’s gardening tranquilly in a herbology patch in one of her older, looser dresses one afternoon when Ada appears and asks her to go for a walk. Hecate dusts down her apron and deposits her dirty gloves, and they stroll down the castle lawns chatting amiably. Hecate is so caught up in explaining to Ada the new plants she has flowering in the greenhouses that she doesn’t notice them approaching the woods until they’re almost past the treeline, and she freezes.

 

Ada continues for a few paces until she realises she’s lost her companion, and turns to look for her. “Everything alright?”

 

Hecate opens her mouth, unsure of how to explain her reticence, when realisation flashes across Ada’s face. “Ah, of course. I’m sorry, we don’t have to-” Ada cuts herself off, and spends moment just looking at the woods, and seems to come to a decision. She returns her focus to Hecate and says “Why don’t you show me?”

 

“Ada…” Hecate replies, imploringly, her palms suddenly itching and her mouth dry. Ada extends a hand towards her, and Hecate takes it nervously, feeling unsteady on her feet.

 

“Come on,” Ada encourages.

 

Their pace is slow as they walk deeper into the woods, and everything in Hecate is screaming at her to go back. She’s been here many times, of course, but always by herself, always to tend to Indigo alone, and she doesn’t _want_ to show Ada this, doesn’t want her to see.

 

It doesn’t take them long to reach the place where Indigo Moon stands, arms outstretched and mouth open in a silent cry of terror. Hecate withdraws her hand and curls her arms about her middle as Ada approaches the stone girl, face pale, lips parted in a soft ‘o’ of surprise. She reaches out as if to touch her, and Hecate chokes out “Don’t!”, and flushes deep red when Ada drops her hand and turns sharply to look at her. Hecate can’t stand the pity in her eyes.

 

“Oh, Hecate.”

 

She draws in a shaky breath, looking away until she can regain her composure. “How long has it been?” Ada queries, gently.

 

Hecate shrugs, still not meeting her gaze. “A long time.” Ada accepts her slightly churlish answer with a sigh, and regards the statue again.

 

“It was an accident,” Ada finally says, firmly, folding her hands in front of her. “A terrible accident, but an accident nonetheless.”

 

“I made a mistake,” Hecate corrects, “A stupid, arrogant mistake.”

 

Ada shakes her head. “We’ve all made mistakes Hecate. All of us.” She looks at Indigo and continues, “Magic can be so volatile, and so overwhelming. It’s a difficult thing to handle, even at our age. Losing that control, being careless with that power, it’s a risk for every young girl who passes through our halls. We cannot be surprised when that lack of control has...tragic results.”

“But Indigo never had a chance. She was never _taught_ control,” Hecate replies, feeling the familiar grief and regret rise in her throat. Ada looks at her in surprise, and shuffles awkwardly, and says “Well, no, I suppose,” and Hecate realises with a sick lurch that Ada hadn’t been talking about Indigo Moon at all. She fixes her eyes to the ground, cheeks burning with shame and mortification. Ada murmurs that they should head back.

 

They part when they get back to the gardens, and Ada leaves Hecate with a sympathetic smile and a touch to her arm. Hecate retrieves her gloves and her trowel and returns to her herb garden, although she finds no peace there for the rest of the afternoon.

 

***

 

The first time Ada won’t listen to her, it is over something fairly innocuous. She has been contemplating adding a history of potions component to her class programme, thinks it might be beneficial for the girls to learn about the development of potioneering as an art, on top of the more specific provenances of each brew they are creating. When she mentions the idea casually to Ada, the older witch frowns and says she’s not sure she sees the benefit.

 

“Oh, it’s interesting, certainly,” she concedes, when Hecate, a touch surprised, continues to make her case, “but I’m not sure it’s relevant to the curriculum. If they’re interested in the field of potion-making as a whole they can always study it in their own time, or take Potions Theory and History at college.”

 

“I just thought-” Hecate starts again, but Ada shakes her head minutely.

 

“It’s not taught at any of the other academies. We don’t want OFWITCH to think we’re _over_ -assessing the girls.”

 

Hecate is a little deflated, but she supposes Ada is right, and after all, Ada has taught at different schools, while Hecate has only ever known Cackle’s. Ada has always had the best interests of the girls at heart, and Hecate worries that Broomhead’s rigorous training has left her with unrealistic expectations of what she should be pushing the students to achieve. Still, she smarts a little from the lack of Ada’s support, and then is angry at herself for it.

 

She sticks to her original lesson plans from then on.

 

Shortly before the Yule break, Ada calls Hecate into her office and bids her sit on one of the armchairs by the fire. She makes them both a pot of tea, and sets out a plate of scones and jam, and settles into her own chair with Pendle curled up on her knee. Hecate’s been invited in to the office for tea a few time since Ada became Headmistress, but this time feels different, like she is there for a purpose, and it doesn’t take Ada long to get to it.

 

“I’ve been thinking,” she begins, directly. “About your confinement.”

 

Hecate places her cup back down onto its saucer carefully, and schools her hands out of a tremble. “Oh?”

 

“Yes,” Ada confirms, her tone determined. “I think I should speak to the Great Wizard. It’s about time we got it lifted.”

 

Hecate sucks in a deep breath that’s half a gasp, half a sob and looks at Ada with wide brown eyes. “Headmistress....”

 

Ada smiles, setting her cup down on the tea table and leaning forward to better meet Hecate’s gaze. “It’s been twenty years Hecate. It’s about time. Now, it won’t be overnight, and it won’t be easy, but I believe Egbert Hellibore to be a reasonable sort of man, and if we work together to construct a case for why you have made more than adequate reparation over your years here, I am sure we can convince him that it’s past time to give you your freedom.”

 

Hecate reels, glad Ada had ensured she was sitting down before she delivered the news. _Her freedom?_ She would be able to leave Cackle’s. She could go out to the next town, or the next city, or...or to Belvoir’s to see Pippa. _Pippa_ . She could finally visit Selene, and attend the Cauldron Club lectures. She could go on holiday. She could go _home._

 

In her mind she pictures her aunt’s face if she were to turn up unannounced at the Hardbroom estate, imagines her relief at the secret stain finally being lifted from the family name. Imagines her cousin, who was always kind to her as a girl, welcoming her back with a smile, and walking down to the tiny witching village a mile from the house and being out in the world again. The thought fills her with excitement and desperation and terror. It’s not that she’s been unhappy here, not entirely, and she loves her work and her classes more than she had ever thought she would but _if she could leave_...

 

Tears blur her vision and spill over down her cheeks, but through them she can see Ada smiling benevolently at her, and Pendle’s narrowed, yellow eyes. Her mind spins, and she feels lightheaded and unmoored, and she latches on to the first thought to tumble through her brain that seems like it might have an actual answer:

 

“But who’ll teach the potions classes?”

 

Ada chuckles, and leans back in her chair, scratching Pendle on the top of his head. “Well, Hecate, you are a very valued member of staff here, and I would hope- that is to say, _if_ you wanted to do so, I would hope that you would continue to teach here at Cackle’s. Just because your confinement is over, you wouldn’t have to pack your bags and be on the first broom out of the school.”

 

Hecate’s jaw drops. _Stay?_ She hadn’t even considered _staying_ at Cackle’s, if her punishment were to be lifted. But now that she considers it, she’s worked so hard here, and built up a department and a life, and made a home for herself, and it would be so hard to just walk away…

 

“You could take a sabbatical of course. A holiday, a year abroad. _Two_ years abroad. Or guest lecturer at other schools...really, the possibilities are endless. But, if you want it, your job would always be here for you.”

 

Hecate’s head is a jumble, and she can feel sweat along the base of her neck, under her high collar, and she all she wants is to go and lie down and take some time to sort through the swirling thoughts and emotions in her head, but Ada hasn’t finished yet.

 

“And besides, if we did need someone to take potions classes, I’ve had an idea on that as well.”

 

“You have?”

 

“My sister, Agatha.”

 

If Hecate had thought she couldn’t be surpried further today, she was wrong. “ _Agatha?_ ”

 

“She’s always had an interest in potions, had quite a knack for them when we were younger. She’s not up to your levels, of course, but I think she’d manage!”

 

“You want to bring _Agatha_ here as Potions Mistress?”

 

“No,” Ada says firmly, a gleam in her eye, and Hecate, already fighting to keep on top of everything that’s going on, nearly falls out of her chair when she announces, “I want to bring her here as co-Headmistress.”

 

“ _What?”_

 

Ada sighs and picks up her tea again, regarding Hecate shrewdly. “You’ve never met my sister, have you Hecate?”

 

“No, I-”

 

“You’ve only heard about her from our mother, and no doubt some of the more scandalous stories from our youth.” Hecate bites her lip, conceding mutely. Ada takes a sip of tea and looks wistfully into the cup.

 

“It’s true, Agatha made some unfortunate choices when she was younger, choices that landed her in Wormwoods for much of her school career. Mother always worried that she was inclined towards the bad, ever since we were little.” Hecate creases her brow a little; who decides as an infant that one of their children is ‘bad’? But Ada continues on:

 

“And when she discovered that she wouldn’t be Headmistress of Cackle’s, she was angry. But we talked, once, of running this school together and sharing its leadership, and she is my sister Hecate. I honestly believe that if she comes here, if she’s given a real place, and if I can just work with her and make her see how much we can do together, that she could be a real force for good in this academy.”

 

Hecate’s head aches. “That’s why you haven’t appointed a deputy.” There had been confusion amongst the staff when Ada had failed to interview for a Deputy Headmistress before the start of term, and when she had made no move to recruit one once the academic year began, but now it makes sense. This has obviously been Ada’s intention all along.

 

Hecate wonders if Ada is going to take it upon herself to fix all the perceived wrongs in the world now she is Headmistress, whether it’s objectively a good idea or not.

 

And while it’s true that she _hasn’t_ ever met Agatha Cackle, she has heard enough about her from Alma, and Miss Bat, and Mistress Balfour, and Mrs. Drill, to be afraid that Ada is letting sentimentality and kindness cloud her judgement.

 

“Ada, I just don’t think-”

 

Ada raises her hand sharply, palm outwards, and arrests Hecate mid-sentence. Hecate snaps her mouth closed in surprise and embarrassment, feeling like a student being scolded by a teacher. “It’s not up for discussion, Hecate. I will be bringing Agatha here with me after the Yule break, and I expect everyone to make her feel as welcome as you all made me feel when I started.” She lowers her hand, and her face regains its usual genial expression.

 

“I understand your concerns, Hecate, I do. But trust me, I believe if I can get Agatha to follow my example, everything will work out for the best.” She runs a hand along Pendle’s back, and he purrs happily.  “I am _sure_ this will be success.”

 

***

 

It is a disaster.

 

From the minute Agatha strides through the front door of the Academy, Hecate is on edge and ready for trouble. Although Ada is overjoyed to have her sister on hand, and Agatha is all smiles and politeness, Hecate sees the teeth behind the grin, and the calculation in her eyes.

 

She makes no secret of the fact she dislikes Hecate, although she is always perfectly civil, and as far as Hecate is concerned the feeling is extremely mutual. Agatha seems to find Hecate’s stiff manner and insistence on discipline irritating, and she curls her lip at the ease of Hecate’s transfer spells and her distinct magical control. Hecate is not sure if it is her friendship with Ada or her thorough command of her power that threatens Agatha more. It is obvious from the way she casts an unimpressed eye around the potions lab that she has no real interest in the subject, and no intention of teaching a class if she can get away with it. She’s really more of an administrator, she tells Hecate with false sweetness, better suited to paperwork than practical pedagogy.

 

Mrs. Drill and Miss Bat do their level best to avoid her, despite having taught her when she was a teenager, and all in all she makes the staff skittish and uncomfortable, with her pushy approach, her brash manner and reputation for trouble. All except for Miss Gullet, who simpers and flatters and fawns sycophantically over her from almost the moment she arrives.

 

It doesn’t take long before she and Ada are at loggerheads - over the curriculum, the classrooms, the castle in general. Agatha wants the students’ education to take a more freeform approach: she wants the girls to study only what interests them, for however long they like, and for them to be allowed to take a more experimental approach in each class so they can discover how their magic works and what best suits them. Hecate is incandescent at the suggestion that they should be allowed to adopt a trial-and-error method in potion-making, has to force her voice down from a shriek as she refuses, suggesting that they might as well just set fire to the castle and be done with it. Agatha bellows back that it would be her job as _potions supervisor_ to make sure they don’t mix any unstable ingredients, and she’s vibrating with rage by the time Ada steps between them and sends Hecate off to her rooms to calm down. She can hear the sisters arguing as she dematerialises.

 

The more Ada resists her suggestions in favour of sticking to Cackle’s traditional values, the more belligerent Agatha becomes, until it blows up one day in a ferocious row, and Agatha accuses Ada viciously of never wanting her to be any kind of real partner in the school, only a puppet, a nominal equal so Ada can assuage her own guilt about having practically stolen Agatha’s birthright just by the virtue of being born thirteen minutes earlier. _You only brought me here to lord it over me!_ she spits, snarling at her sister, as Ada’s chest heaves and her hands ball into fists. _You never wanted to share this school with me. You just can’t bear to be on your own. You’re terrified of it. Always needing someone to play second fiddle. Well, I’ll show_ **_you_ ** _!_

 

The ensuing magical fight takes out two unused classrooms and part of the East corridor, but fortunately Agatha is so incensed that she fires her first spell at Ada without the presence of mind to declare a Section 7, and once Hecate and Mrs. Drill have gotten any nearby students out of the way, and Miss Bat and Miss Gullet are holding protective spells in place, they are able to run back down to defend Ada, and Agatha is swiftly overpowered.

 

When the girls have been calmed, and the damaged areas of the castle sealed off, and Agatha has been dispatched back to the care of the Cackle family, Hecate finds Ada in her office, once more seated in her armchair, this time with a cup of something rather stronger than tea in her hand. Hecate hovers uncertainly just outside the circle of light cast by the fire, and Ada rubs her forehead and stares into the flames with tired, melancholy eyes.

 

“She was never interested in the school for what it stood for, you know,” Ada says finally, after longs minutes of silence, startling Hecate. “For the beacon of witching education that I want it to become. She just wanted the power. The authority. I thought she’d changed.” Ada takes a long swallow of her drink, and Hecate twists her hands together anxiously. In all the upheaval since Agatha arrived they haven’t talked about....about _the other thing_ , and she knows now isn’t the right time to bring it up, not when Ada’s hurt and miserable, and the school needs time to recover. Still, all this has only strengthened her desire to get away, even for a while, to have a break from the academy and the stress and the constant fire-fighting that seems to come with teaching at a magical school. Sometimes literally.

 

“I’ll be fine, Hecate,” Ada smiles wearily at her, although there’s no reassurance in it. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you in the morning.” Hecate does a last check of the girls, some of them still teary and restless, before she goes to bed herself. She sinks into an exhausted, dreamless sleep, relieved that Agatha is gone and normality might restore itself to Cackle’s once again.

 

In the morning she finds Ada looking purposeful, her face still a little pale and drawn, but her eyes once more resolute. She invites Hecate to her office again, and this time she sits in the Headmistress’s chair, Hecate facing her across the desk.

 

“I know the last few months have been hard,” she begins, linking her fingers and placing her hands in front of her on the table. “I will admit, I did not forsee the way things would turn out with Agatha.” Hecate keeps her expression carefully neutral; Ada is her friend, and it would do no go to say ‘I told you so’ now. Apparently satisfied that she detects no hint of superiority on Hecate’s face, Ada carries on:

 

“What the school will need for the next while is stability, and a strong hand to guide it, while we recover from this...this unfortunate business.”

 

“I am sure you are more than up to the task, Headmistress,” Hecate assures her, gently, and Ada smiles at her.

 

“Thank you. I won’t pretend that this whole debacle with Agatha hasn’t left me troubled, but it’s obvious now that we could never have co-headed the academy. That being said, I certainly can’t run it on my own.”

 

“You need a Deputy Head,” Hecate confirms, “Someone to support you, but not countermand your authority, the way you did for your mother.” She is flattered Ada has brought her here to confide in her, and to seek her advice on the matter. None of the current teaching staff will do, of course - Miss Bat is too old, Mrs. Drill wouldn’t want it, and Merlin-forbid that dreadful Miss Gullet be in contention. She starts mentally running through a list of her Cauldron Club associates who teach in similar academies. Perhaps one of them is looking to move up the  ladder-

 

“That’s why I’m promoting you.”

 

Hecate snaps back to attention, a distant ringing in her ears. “Excuse me?”

 

Ada beams at her. “I told you long ago that I believed I could rely on you when I took over as Headmistress, as a teacher, and now as a deputy. I think, in the wake of Agatha’s _ideas_ , your penchant for discipline and order is something the academy could sorely use. You and I could make quite the team, together.”

 

“But-”

 

“I know you haven’t been teaching as long as some of the others, but I honestly couldn’t think of a better candidate. I’ll make the announcement tomorrow in assembly. And thank you, Hecate; you really have been a true friend through this trying time.”

 

Ada rises, and Hecate numbly rises with her, out of habit more than anything. She crosses to the door with her, and is out into the corridor before her brain has time to catch up, a high whine still sounding in her ear. She holds herself together as she walks to her potions class, unable to manage even a simple transportation spell, because that would involve thinking and she’s _not thinking, not thinking, not yet_ , and she walks into the room of third years and sends them to the library, ignoring their bewildered looks and confused whispers. Once the last student is out into the hall, Hecate closes the door behind them and sinks into her chair, and finally lets her mind process the conversation she’s just had.

 

She is Deputy Headmistress.

 

She’s not leaving.

 

Pain bursts across her chest and through her abdomen, and Hecate is doubled over by the force of it, heaving in air, hearing the hitch and wail in her own voice as she struggles.

 

 _But Ada promised. She_ **_promised_ ** _._

 

But she hadn’t, had she? a treacherous little voice whispers inside her. She had talked about speaking to the Great Wizard, had said she thought it was time, but she had promised Hecate nothing. She’s broken no vow. _Hecate_ had jumped the gun, and started envisioning  an existence outside of this academy, and let herself believe that her freedom was only a matter of time. Ada had given her no guarantees, and she certainly doesn’t _owe_ Hecate anything; her punishment came with no expiration date. And Ada must put the needs of the school first, because she is dedicated, and she is offering Hecate a chance to do the same, because she believes in her, and Ada is her friend, Ada is supportive, Ada is-

 

 _Weak_.

 

The voice sounds both at once like Agatha and like Mistress Broomhead, and the word dances behind Hecate’s eyes as she breathes shallowly, recalling Agatha’s angry howl: _You just can’t bear to be on your own. You’re_ **_terrified_ ** _of it. Always needing someone to play_ **_second fiddle_ ** _._

 

The potions bottles on the shelf behind her explode into fragments of glass, raining multi-coloured liquid down on the floor, the desk, her hair.

 

She’s not leaving.

 

She wants to run to someone, but she can’t see Miss Bat or Mrs. Drill; they’re Ada’s staff members, and their loyalty must lie with her. She wants to call Selene, or Juniper, or even Evanora, to tell them what’s happened and have them tell her it isn’t fair, _it isn’t fair_ , but to explain all this, she would have to acquaint them with everything: with Joy and Indigo and the Great Wizard’s decree, and her whole, sorry life, and she can’t. She absolutely can’t. Not now. Not ever.

 

She grips the edge of her desk, knuckles white, small sounds of distress still escaping from her lips as she breathes in and out, in and out.

 

She is Deputy Headmistress.

 

Hecate lifts her head shakily, and wipes at her eyes, and digs her nails into her palms. These hysterics are unbecoming of her, especially now, and worse still, they are ungrateful. She should be humbled that Ada had even _considered_ speaking to the Great Wizard on her behalf, having stood before the stone Indigo and seen the evidence of what she’d done. The Cackle’s have given her a job and an education, a purpose within these walls and now they’re offering more prestige, more responsibility, and she sits weeping in her classroom like she’s still thirteen years old. Like she still believes in _fair._

 

And Ada Cackle is her friend. She must be. _She must be._ Because otherwise, Ada is a nothing more than a selfish, thoughtless, entitled witch who's used Hecate as a convenient stand-in for her absent sister, taken her trust in her and cast it aside without a care, and Hecate has no-one.

 

Ada is her friend.

 

Slowly, Hecate rises from her chair and summons a broom to her hand. She looks at the spilled potions on the floor, drops glinting cheerfully on the edges of fractured glass, and begins to sweep up the mess.

 


	12. i would speak, but shame prevents me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It’s heading into summer when the invitations arrive, requesting the presence of Headmistress Ada Cackle and her staff at the laying of the Founding Stone for Pentangle’s Academy of Magic. "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This took slightly longer than expected, sorry! This chapter was a bit of a bugger to write. Featuring a whole lot of Feelings from just about everyone.

As Hecate could have predicted, there is a furore with Miss Gullet when her promotion is announced, and some slight surprise from the other teachers, but it calms quickly and they accept her new position as Deputy Head with good grace, while Gullet merely sulks for a month or three. Ada cancels the Potions Camp this year, citing the school’s need for recovery after what they’re now just calling ‘the Agatha incident’, and though Hecate wants to argue, she finds she doesn’t quite have the energy. Instead, she calls the Potions Mistress at Amythest’s, the same woman she had so thoughtlessly greeted on her ill-advised excursion to the Grand Palace, and asks if she thinks her school would be amenable to hosting this year.

 

“Of course!” the other woman says, nonplussed. “I can’t imagine that’ll be a problem, but...shall you come here, then? You’ve never been to Amythest’s, have you?” 

 

Hecate confirms that, no, she hasn’t, and no, she won’t. “I intend to go abroad for a few weeks to visit family,” she lies smoothly, and her colleague nods thoughtfully through the mirror. 

 

“Oh. Alright. Well, once your school is all...returned to normal,” she says with delicacy, the news of the Cackle feud having spread with unsurprising swiftness to the other witching academies, “I’m sure we’ll be back to you next year.”

 

Hecate wishes she had her confidence. 

 

Instead, once the others have all departed, she spends the first weeks of summer revising a few articles and planning her new book, jotting down some notes for diagrams and illustrations to send to Juniper. She hasn’t seen the other witch in a few years, not since she’d moved away and gotten married. Hecate had been asked to the wedding, of course - she and Miss Merigold had remained good friends throughout the years, keeping in regular contact and working together on many of Hecate’s projects - and she had been in a fit of vexation when the invitation arrived, desperate not to seem sullen and ill-mannered in her refusal, or have Juniper think she harboured some heretofore unspoken bitterness over their prior fling. Along with the customary congratulatory gifts and tokens, she had sent a letter apologising profusely for her inattendance, and had fretted herself half out of her mind until Juniper had mirrored her a few days later and laughingly told her not to worry so much about it. “It would have been lovely to see you,” she said, with a fond sincerity, “but I know you’re kept busy where you are.” Hecate could still see the curiosity in her eyes, though, and knows it’s reflected in the expressions of each of her friends every time she turns down yet another invitation. Those questions they long to ask her: why does she never go out? Why does she never come to these things? Why is she always _missing_ so much?

 

She’s missed so much. 

 

It’s this thought that causes her to put her foot down preemptively, before any objection can be raised against her inviting her friends to the castle this year, determined not to spend a wretched summer alone and drifting through the halls as she had done in her teenage years. It’s not as though any of the other staff are _here,_ anyway, she tells herself, pushing away the nagging feeling that Ada won’t be happy about it regardless. The headmistress doesn’t voice any outright objection, but there’s a just-perceptible tightness in her expression when she leaves for her mother’s in June. The Cauldronites descend on the castle with their customary exuberance, one or two new faces in the mix as always, casting curious eyes at Hecate and her surrounds. She lies curled in bed one evening with a photographer from _Witch Way_ , a curvy brunette with whom she’s had the odd dalliance previously, and who she tries to forget has taken picture after picture of Pippa for her lifestyle magazine - Pippa at events and parties and interviews, all sparkling smiles and mischievous eyes, fostering a framed intimacy with the other witch down the lens of her camera in places and circumstances that will never be open to Hecate. She must sense the despair and frustration simmering below Hecate’s skin, or perhaps she just wears it more openly on her face than usual, because she asks _what’s wrong?_ in a curious voice. Hecate closes her eyes, too tired and empty to bother with the effort of lying, even to herself.

 

The Cauldronites leave and Ada returns, her eyes sharp for any perceived infraction, although the castle has been returned to its customary state of existence. From then on, Ada always spends a portion of her summers at the Academy, and Hecate’s friends come in smaller and quieter groups, the awkwardness of imposition scything them away like autumn leaves in the wind. 

 

As she suspected, Hecate has overseen her last potions camp. The Mistresses from Amythest’s and Amulet’s claim she is sorely missed. Time drifts by, and Hecate settles routine around her shoulders like a mantle; as Ada had predicted, she proves a resolute counterpoint to the chaos of Agatha, and a strict but steady Deputy Headmistress. Somewhere along the line, she fears occasionally, she has begun to harden, to become inflexible - but the possibilities and promises of change have wrought her nothing but disappointment thus far, and she takes comfort in the solidity of her unchanging methods and stows the doubts away. If she is to be the second person Joy Hardbroom’s careless actions turn to stone, she thinks, then so be it. She chides herself for her melodramatics. Selene calls regularly, and then less so; doesn’t understand why she doesn’t move on, see the world, teach at a different damn school at the very least, and Hecate delflects and obfuscates and excuses until Selene, too, remains connected to Hecate only by the most delicate of threads. Hecate knows she isn’t making a fair effort, but she can’t find it in her, somehow; she wouldn’t know how to talk about herself if she could. Her chest burns with the exertion of simply existing. So, mechanically, she works: she gardens, she researches, she publishes and is published, and she brews and she teaches and she sleeps, and the routine is enough to be getting on with. Sometimes she takes tea with Ada in the evenings. 

 

It is Miss Bat who notices first - she realises a long time afterwards - and in her usual roundabout way she starts seeking Hecate out for conversation or quiet company, settling down with a book in the staff room while Hecate works, wittering blithely about the day, or patronising the greenhouses with questions about specialised plants or herbs that Hecate can’t fathom her need of. Then it’s Mrs. Drill, appearing with the sun, asking her to fly with her around the castle perimeter and check the wards, or consider a new obstacle course from a bird’s-eye view, or to help her test the school’s old, spare broomsticks on a nice, clear day. They both pepper their conversations with seemingly inane questions about how her latest article is coming along, or how her classes are going, or who she’s spoken to recently and whether they should invite some guest potioneers of her acquaintance along for seminars or workshops or conferences, and nod patiently through her often-halting answers. Miss Bat starts to lend her books so they can chat about them at break times, and Mrs. Drill accosts her with articles on developments in education in which she almost always takes the opposite view from Hecate. One or the other of them always seeks her out a meal-times and walks her to the hall, even on the days when she protests she isn’t hungry. By the time she emerges far enough out of the fog-cloud to recognise what they’re doing and why, she has returned to being capable of feeling the gratitude that washes through her and prickles her eyes and throat; resolves to catalogue all the little things they have done to bring her back out of herself and try to manage them where she can. She still takes comfort in her routine, she still holds fast to her methods, but she makes space once again for the new around the edges. She rises a little easier in the mornings. She mirrors Selene. She _breathes_. On the days when it starts to press down on her again, she asks Gwen if she can borrow a book.

 

The first news of the new magical institute planned for Kent arrives in the pages of the Cauldronite newsletter; a full-page announcement befitting one of their most popular and admired associates. Hecate stares at the artistic rendering of an elegant, baronial castle, with tall windows and graceful spires, its stone exterior glimmering white in the illustrated sunshine that spills from its slanted roofs down over its exquisitely landscaped gardens. It screams of Pippa’s design - classical beautiful, with a hint of fairytale; traditional enough in style not to raise too many eyebrows, but bright, light and airy in comparison to the towering gothic edifices that house most of the other magical establishments. She adores it. It will take time to construct, of course, but on completion it will become the first training school of Modern Magic in the country; the school Pippa had always planned. _Pentangle’s Academy._

 

Hecate stares and stares, tracing a finger gently over the lines and angles of the building, her throat constricting painfully with a mixture of elation and longing and pride. She’d _done_ it. All those years of talking about how she would start her own school and she’d _done it_ , and Hecate can’t imagine the lengths she’s had to go to, the hoops she’s had to jump through, the arguments and petty comments and patronising dismissals she’s faced to get here, but there’s going to be a _Pentangle’s Academy_ , the first new witching school in Britain in a century at least. Her ebullience at Pippa’s achievement is such that it even carries her through the line in the article that announces it’s going to be _co-ed_ . For a brief, rare moment, Hecate can’t regret the ending between them. She was right to let her go, to avoid the risk of Pippa tying herself to this castle, to this life with her. She wishes she could tell her how proud she is of her, how delighted at her success. Hecate thinks of the card with the bubbling potions bottle on its front, locked away in her chest, and wonders if she should send a similar token, if it would be welcomed after these long years of separation. It’s only polite, really, she tells herself firmly, not only as a reciprocal gesture but as a fellow educator and Cauldronite, and an old acquaintance if nothing more, and she rather shyly asks Mrs Drill if she would mind picking up a congratulatory card for her the next time she ventures down to the town. Her determination lasts until she sits down at her desk and faces the blank surface of the card, pen in hand, and struggles to know what to say. _Congratulations_ seems too simple, too trite, after her decades of self-imposed silence, and yet anything additional feels over-familiar and presumptive, or worse, like an evasion of the past and everything that transpired between them. She doesn’t know how to acknowledge their history in an appropriate manner, or if she even should in this context, or how to pitch the tone of the message so that it’s not too aloof and yet not too forward, and eventually she ties herself up in such a knot about it that she pushes away from the desk, shoves the still-blank card in a drawer, and promises herself that she’ll look at it again once she’s had time to properly think about what to say. 

 

It’s still there a year later when the official opening date for Pentangle’s is announced, later still when the first prospectuses begin to make their way to potential students, and then while Pippa is splashed across the pages of every magical publication going - educational and otherwise - promoting the benefits of her wide-ranging modern curriculum and the advantages to be had in studying contemporary methods in an up-to-date, purpose-built, fully-equipped new school. The reaction to her new academy has been much as Hecate expected, with opinions split firmly down the middle towards both the school and Pippa herself, and Hecate has spent many afternoons scowling at opinion pieces and Letters to the Editor that question the blonde’s approach to the craft, or her inherent abilities as both a practitioner and a teacher. The rebuffals and missives of support are just as prevalent, though, singing Pippa’s praises, and all in all as the launch of the academy approaches Hecate feels as though she is as engulfed in Pippa’s presence as she ever was in the days when she comprised Hecate’s whole world. She keeps the early drawing of Pentangle’s castle pinned to her wall.

 

The rest of the magical academies face the opening of Pentangle’s with a mix of curiosity and concern. Ada, who had once seemed unperturbed by the idea, grows increasingly troubled as Pentangle’s enrollment numbers increase, and a few families who customarily would have sent their girls to Cackle’s instead sign them up for Pippa’s first intake. Hecate finds her one breaktime in the staff room leafing through the Pentangle’s brochure for the fiftieth time, frowning at a glossy photograph of their competition-sized Witch Ball court.

 

“Will it really take off, do you think?” she asks suddenly, as Hecate is pouring herself a cup of tea. She turns, eyebrow raised.

 

“Pentangles?”

 

“Modern magic,” Ada clarifies, flicking a few pages between her fingers and peering at block of text outlining the ethos of the new school. “All this ‘improved chanting’ and ‘unconventional potions application’.”

 

“It’s popular on the continent,” Hecate ventures, blowing gently across the rim of her teacup to cool it down.

 

“Yes, but we do things differently here. More... _traditionally_ , so to speak. There are certain values inherent in doing things in the time-honoured fashion.”

 

Hecate, who has spent years being rigorously taught the ‘time-honoured values of tradition’, and who can’t honestly imagine changing her own methods now, nods uneasily. “I don’t necessarily disagree-”

 

“I’ve met her a few times, you know,” Ada interrupts, heedlessly. “Miss Pentangle. At conferences and things. She’s a nice girl; very charming, certainly. Very passionate about her subject. I don’t doubt she has good intentions, but…”

 

Hecate’s shoulders tense, her eyes fixed on the contents of her cup. They’ve talked about Pentangle’s plenty already, of course, but only in broad strokes: what it might mean for their numbers, how their curriculums might match up, how nice it would be to have the money to put into their own facilities that private-school fees might have provided - all things they’ve discussed in relation to numerous other academies at one point or another. They’ve never talked about _Pippa_ , directly, and her chest tightens a little as the subject presents itself unexpectedly.

 

“What experience has she had, really? I mean, she’s jumped straight up the ladder to headteacher, without spending any time as a deputy. I can’t help but feel that it’s a position one should have to _earn_ ,” Ada laments, with a glum shake of her head, seemingly inured to the fact that the headship of Cackle’s had been passed from mother to daughter since before the time of the Reformation. Bad luck that Mrs Pentangle had never owned an academy her daughter could have _earned experience_ at. Hecate mentally shakes herself. Talking about Pippa is making her prickly, and she’s beginning to sound like Miss Gullet.

 

“I-”

 

“I worry it’s a fad, that’s all. Running a school successfully is about more than just catering to the zeitgeist. It might all be terribly popular for a few years, and then the bubble bursts and she’s left not knowing how to teach the _fundamentals_. How long does her school last then?  And what does that mean for the rest of us? If Pentangle’s siphons away our prospective pupils - and Amethyst’s’, and Amulet’s’, et. cetera - how many traditional academies are going to be left? I can see mergers in our future, Hecate,” Ada continues solemnly. “Amalgamations.” She gazes sadly around the room and out of the open window to the lawns. “We could end up having to abandon this castle.”

 

Hecate nearly chokes on the sip of tea she’s just taken. _Abandon the castle?_ But that would mean...what _would_ that mean? Surely the Magic Council wouldn’t leave her here, bound to an empty fortress for the rest of her days? _The same Magic Council who handed you a life sentence at fourteen?_ her mind whispers, insidiously. If Cackle’s moved to another campus, could they alter the spell to take her with them? She trembles at the thought. She hasn’t been outside of these grounds since her disastrous visit to the palace all those years ago. And becoming bound to another academy - well, people would have to be told, people she’s worked with whom she respects, and who respect her. How quickly would that respect vanish? How fast would her reputation come crashing down into the mud? This whole sorry business has been a secret for so long, and it was _never_ supposed to get out. Perhaps to protect it, the Council _would_ be prepared to leave her here forever…

 

Her mind is spinning in a million different directions, thoughts circling back on themselves and tangling together as she feels the breath catch in her chest and her hand flex involuntarily around the handle of her teacup. Ada must notice something change in her expression because she smiles sympathetically and peers over the top of her spectacles. “Oh, don’t mind me, Hecate, honestly. That’s the absolute worst-case scenario. Not even worth thinking about, really. I’m just catastrophising. It’s silly.” Hecate focuses on Ada’s understanding eyes behind her glasses as she wrestles her breathing under control. She waits for the reassurances she’s sure will be forthcoming, but suddenly Ada’s brow crinkles and she looks thoughtful. “But surely you must have known her?”

 

The conversational whiplash staggers her for a moment and she blinks at Ada, “I’m sorry?”

 

“Miss Pentangle! You’re about the same age, aren’t you? She must have been here when you were a student.”

 

“Oh,” Hecate responds shakily, pivoting to place her cup on the counter. “Yes.”

 

“What do you think of her?”

 

Hecate turns back to Ada’s upturned face. Her mind is still reeling as she tries to formulate an answer to the question, tries to think how she could possibly explain to Ada that Pippa was the only reason she had made it through the years immediately following her confinement. How she had stood by a terrified girl full of grief and remorse and made her smile again, and supported her, and even loved her. How she’s spent almost two decades missing her easy laughter and warm hands, and longed for her voice and her deep brown eyes. How she’d risked everything just to catch a glimpse of her, once, and how proud and in awe she is of her even now, even when their approaches to magic are so different, and the possibility of her realising her life’s dream might jeopardise everything for Hecate and the academy that’s become the sum-total of her existence. How she still loves a girl who has become, quite unexpectedly, their opposition. Ada’s direct competition.  

 

Ada is still waiting, expectantly. Hecate swallows, and lies.

 

“We weren’t really close.”

 

Ada smiles and sets the brochure down. “Well. I suppose we will all just have to wait and see,” she says, and gets up to bustle over to a cupboard filled with textbooks where she rifles around for a few moments. Hecate is still standing motionless on the spot, and her gaze falls to the cover of the Pentangle’s prospectus, where the gleaming stone of the elegant castle sparkles on the page. The image makes her stomach sour, suddenly, and she has to look away. She mumbles something indistinctly to Ada and leaves, and teaches for the rest of the afternoon with a dull headache behind her eyes, and the nagging feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. When she returns to her room at the end of the day, she carefully takes down the picture from her wall, and drops it into the wastepaper bin. 

 

_

 

It’s heading into summer when the invitations arrive, requesting the presence of Headmistress Ada Cackle and her staff at the laying of the Founding Stone for Pentangle’s Academy of Magic. Hecate holds the thick, expensive-feeling card in her hands, eyes tracing the inlaid pink pattern that swirls along the edges of the cream surface and complements the loops and whirls of Pippa’s expressive, rose-coloured signature. It’s changed a little since Hecate last saw it; it’s bolder, more confident, takes up more space on the page. She barely registers the excited chattering of the other teachers around her, had taken the proffered card from Miss Gullet with numb fingers and kept her head ducked to hide the hot flush across her cheeks. Miss Cackle is already planning when to get everyone’s school dress robes out of storage, and Mrs Drill is exclaiming cheerfully that they’ll get to see Dimity there for some sort of fly-over (and she’s making quite a name for herself in the Witch Ball world, you know, been scouted for the national team and everything.) Hecate thrusts the invitation in the general direction of one of their regular supply-witches, and rises sharply from her chair. Gwen tries to catch her eye, and Hecate looks away swiftly as she moves towards the door, desperate to be out of the staff room and away from the all the lively anticipation. There’s no point wishing, she tells herself emphatically. She can’t go, and Ada will just have to make her excuses, and she’ll never see Pentangle’s and that’s that. It doesn’t matter anyway; she would be just one teacher in a sea of pointy hats, and the only reason she’s welcome at all is under the umbrella of the Cackle’s Academy staff.

 

She stalks to her room, girls scattering in her wake, not even thinking about transference until she’s on the other side of her door and leaning against the old wood, her head resting back against the hard surface. A soft yowl from Morgana makes her open her eyes, and her heart constricts as she sees a second envelope - cream coloured, pink edging - sitting on her desk under her cat’s delicate paws. She retrieves it tentatively, wondering if duplicate invitations were sent to the Deputy Heads of each of the academies in case they escaped the Headmistress' notice, but when she slides the card out of its binding she sees only her own name written in blush ink across the top, and a smaller slip of paper which floats to the floor. She retrieves it with unsteady fingers, unfolds it, and stares at the words inscribed there in familiar handwriting:

 

_It would mean a lot to me if you came._

 

She sinks heavily into her chair, breathless, the paper crumpling between her fingers as she presses the heels of her hands to her eyes as if she can physically stem the tide that rises inside her. She sits there, strangled and immobile, until the muscles in her back and shoulders are screaming and she stumbles to her bed to lie awake, too bitter and wretched to sleep. Morgana spends the night curled against Hecate’s heartsick form, trying to impart some comfort with her steady warmth, her fur wet with tears.

 

The day of the ceremony arrives with the beginning of the holidays, and Hecate stands in the entry hall of Cackle’s and watches the others in the quadrangle mount their brooms, dressed in their formal robes and finest hats with gleaming academy crests. Gwen squeezes her hand briefly as she passes by, and Ada pauses halfway to the door with her broomstick in hand and asks, “Is there any message you’d like me to pass on?”

 

Hecate thinks of the unwritten card upstairs and the old, old letter tied up in her memory chest, and shakes her head. “No.” As Ada goes to move past her, she amends, “Just- please pass along my apologies. Tell Miss Pentangle I had a prior commitment I couldn’t get out of....” Ada looks at her, and waits, “whatever you think is best.” The other witch gives her a kind smile and a nod, and then she’s away, the staff rising into the air and heading south, out into a world that Hecate can barely remember. She can’t even recall, later, how she passes the time that day: haunting the castle corridors distracted and disconsolate, her thoughts a hundred miles away. She goes to bed before the others return, not able to face their enthusiastic recollection of the ceremony, or their positive impressions of the school and the staff. The pictures appear in the papers the next day, anyway, and there Pippa is, dressed in the dark blue and purple of her school’s colours, standing next to a slender, dark-haired woman the caption informs her is the academy’s Deputy Head, Avery Heartsong. They’re both grinning at the camera, and Pippa looks fit to overflow with happiness and pride. Although she couldn’t have thought it possible, Hecate breaks a little further.

 

The note arrives three days after the Founding Stone ceremony, and Hecate recognises the hand with a nervous lurch in her stomach, and secrets herself away in her lab to open it. It’s still Pippa’s writing, but the lines and edges are hard, the paper showing the weight behind the pen that had scratched the words into its surface. It’s harsh and hurried, a letter written in anger and sent before the writer had the chance to change her mind.

 

_Sad you couldn’t attend, even out of professional courtesy. Message received and understood._

 

She reads the two lines over and over, hands shaking and eyes blurry. It’s the closest thing to a ‘fuck you’ she’s ever recived from Pippa, and she knows she deserves it. She feels, suddenly, hollow and sick, and her heartbeat sounds in her ears like an accusation. 

 

When she makes it up to dinner, she is pale and quiet, and Ada (the only remaining staff member at the school, and due to depart for the summer tomorrow) curiously inquires after her health. Hecate pushes her food around her plate with her fork for a moment, and then asks, quietly, if she might know what Ada had said to Miss Pentangle, when she excused Hecate’s absence from the opening of her academy.

 

“Oh,” Ada says brightly, turning her attention back to her own plate. “I just told her you were on holiday! Is that alright?”

 

Hecate doesn’t reply.

 

Pippa doesn’t speak to her again for another ten years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's interested, my personal headcanon for Pentangle's Academy is the rather lovely [Dunrobin Castle](https://d1xw84ija6gjgy.cloudfront.net/production/880610aa9f9de9ea7c545169c716f477/conversions/720p.jpg) in Sutherland. It being a Scottish castle, I had to stretch my imagination to describe what it might look like in the sunshine. 
> 
> I also couldn't help but give a nod to my favourite fanon Pentangle's deputy, Miss Avery Heartsong, who is stolen entirely from thispapermoon.


	13. you came and i was longing for you (part one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And then, in the spring, comes the Spelling Bee."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update! Welcome to ~~Thunderdome~~ the Spelling Bee!
> 
> Thank you so much for all your kind words and support over the course of this fic so far, folks. It turned into a much bigger undertaking than I expected, and all your lovely comments have made it a joy to keep working on. A special thanks go to twtd, who looked over this double chapter for me while I hid under my desk and declared I was never writing again.
> 
> Also, I watched Spelling Bee SO MANY TIMES while I was writing this I could now perform it as a one-woman show.

If she had known Mildred Hubble was to be the herald of her destruction, Hecate might have left her in the school pond. 

 

She has been the Potions Mistress at Cackle’s for just shy of twenty years and has already seen a generation of witches pass through the gates of the academy, sending their daughters in their wake. It’s not only the students who are replaced by their children in course - Mrs. Drill decides to retire and is succeeded immediately by Dimity, who has abandoned the world of professional athletics in favour of extolling the joys of physical education to half-hearted teenagers. Hecate finds her departure harder than she anticipated. If questioned, however, she loudly blames her low-spirits on the fact that she’d convinced herself she’d never have to deal with Dimity Drill again. She does this quite often in Dimity’s presence. 

 

During her long service, Esmerelda Hallow is the first girl to remind Hecate of the witch she wanted to be, once upon a time. Talented, capable and ambitious, with a ready smile, Esme is tempered by a kind heart and studious nature, her determined little face peering at Hecate over her potions workbench with an eagerness to learn from her very first day. Without Hecate’s former recklessness, without her overconfidence and arrogance and her disregard for the rules that did not suit her, Esme is a promise: a chance for Hecate to use the benefit of hindsight to ensure she has every possible opportunity open to her. She pours her energy into the girl, and Esme responds well to her, the first one not afraid of Hecate’s exacting standards and strict demeanour, coming as she does from demanding parents of prestigious standing. She won’t be another Joy, Hecate knows, as she watches Esme throw herself into her studies with resolve, and listens in satisfaction to her ideas on new potions and chants and charms. If anything, Hecate will help her become another Pippa. She’ll see her focus and control her power for the betterment of the craft and the community.

 

Mildred is the antithesis of Esmerelda. Hecate towers above the girl on her first day, and makes biting comments about her ineptitude and unsuitability for the academy, despite her admittedly invaluable assistance with the whole _Agatha_ calamity (again and again, Ada gives her a chance, and Hecate’s protestations fall on deaf ears, as her acrimony towards Agatha burns and broils in her veins: _if only you had kept you temper; if only_ **_you_ ** _had stayed._ ) She pleads with Ada not to give her a place, to reconsider, to think about how dangerous an unruly girl with untrained magic could be, and shouldn’t _she_ , of all people, know? But Ada will not be reasoned with, and so Hecate unwillingly inherits the care of a ticking time-bomb, and tries with all her might to defuse it. She spends the majority of the year with patience thinner and nerves more highly-strung than usual, on constant edge for the first indication that Mildred’s lack of restraint will result in utter catastrophe, and the nauseating sensation that she is helplessly watching history repeat itself. She comes down harder, faster, with more vitriol at each and every mis-step, a small, mean part of her hoping that if Ada won’t listen to her, perhaps she can drive the girl from the place by sheer pettiness alone.

 

Still, Mildred resolutely soldiers on, upending her routines and processes and procedures. Through Mildred, Miss Gullet - a colleague for nearly Hecate’s whole teaching career - is revealed to be a spy for Agatha, and before she knows what’s happening a _wizard_ is teaching in the corridor along from her, the long-lost paramour of Miss Bat who so mysteriously disappeared all those years ago. She watches Gwen blossom with his return, listens to Algernon’s emotional recounting of _30 years apart,_ and she tries (she does, she really _tries_ ) not to resent them. 

 

And then, in the spring, comes the Spelling Bee.

 

Cackle’s has been a persistent competitor and frequent champion, of course, and her students’ prowess with a cauldron is the stuff of academic legend. They’ve seen off most of the other academies at least once - Amulet’s thrice - since the competition’s investiture, but Pentangle’s, with their unconventional methods and alternative approach to potions theory and application, has rarely made a showing, and certainly never a final. It’s why she doesn’t bother to check with Algernon when the memo comes through informing them of their opponents (although she curses the mix of distraction and complacency that causes her to forget that her last year’s winners were from the _G_ s, and therefore fail to foresee who will inevitably be representing Cackle’s this time.) Since he’d seemed so keen on the whole idea of the competition when it was initially mentioned in the first term, she had graciously handed over her usual organisational duties to him, and is therefore caught completely and utterly off-guard standing before her first-year class in the potions laboratory, when Ada announces who they’ll be facing tomorrow. 

 

“Miss...Pen _tangle_ ?” she chokes out, shocked almost into stupefaction, ears ringing and chest tight. Ada just smiles blithely as the classroom erupts into excited chattering, and distantly Hecate hears Felicity Foxglove sigh about _the most glamorous witch there is_. She’s too overwhelmed to react appropriately when Misses ‘Hallow’ and ‘Hubble’ are called forward as their champions, and she doesn’t even try to agree with Mildred’s protestations about finding someone more suitable. Her whole world has narrowed to the sudden frantic pounding of her pulse in her throat, the shake in her hands, and _Miss Pentangle, Miss Pentangle, Miss Pentangle._ She stares into the empty space straight ahead, and when Ada has finished addressing the students, she turns on her heel and marches out of the potions lab, transfers immediately to her room, and sits heavily on her bed while she fights the urge to throw up.

 

 _Tomorrow._ That means Pippa will be here _today_. This afternoon. In mere _hours_. 

 

And Hecate has no idea what she’s going to say.

 

It takes her twenty minutes or so to collect herself, calm her shredded nerves to a manageable state, and remember with a bolt of horror that _she’s supposed to be teaching a potions class._ She’s about to lift her hands to transfer back downstairs and splutter some excuse to Ada when there’s a rap on her door and the woman herself pokes her head into the room.

 

“I’ve got Mr. Rowan-Webb covering your class, Hecate,” she says, with no trace of disparagement. “I thought perhaps you’d disappeared off to strategise!”

 

Hecate grabs the excuse with both hands, and nods. “Yes, Headmistress. Thank you.”

 

“Let me know if you need anything,” Ada declares. “I’ll excuse Ethel and Mildred from the rest of the day’s classes for training.” She closes the door and Hecate breathes out. That’s it then, she thinks grimly, trying her hardest to bottle back up the feelings that have flooded her veins since the announcement. She doesn’t have time to prepare. She doesn’t have time to _panic_. This must all be about the competition, not about her, not about Pippa. She’ll spend the rest of today coaching and evaluating the girls to within an inch of their lives, and tomorrow they’ll see Pentangle’s off with such ferocity that they’ll never have the nerve to face them in a Spelling Bee again. She grasps the timepiece around her neck and draws some reassurance from the steady _tick_ behind the metal casing. She has to focus on the competition.

 

It’s at that point something fully dawns on her, and she groans.

 

“Mildred _Hubble?_

 

_***_

 

True to her word, she drills the girls solidly over the course of the morning, taking them back to basics and barking instructions and ingredients at them until even Ethel looks a little overwhelmed. She snaps, and she sneers, and she _confiscates a student’s cat_ , but eventually even Mildred produces a potion that she can declare acceptable, and when twelve o’clock rolls around and it’s almost time for the Pentangle’s students to descend, she has managed by some miracle not to wind herself up to breaking point by thinking about what’s going to happen in the next ten minutes. 

 

She sends Mildred and Ethel off to where she knows the girls will be gathering to welcome their opposition, and takes a moment to press the flats of her hands to the encouragingly solid surface of her desk, and breathes in, and out. Now that the moment’s here, she doesn’t know what to feel - terror and exhilaration and regret and longing war under her skin, crashing against one another in waves until all she really feels is numb. There’s no putting it off, and she steels herself, and materialises around a corner to the shrill yammer of a gaggle of excited school girls, their exuberant voices piercing her eardrums in way that she is currently unable to tolerate. They disperse at her appearance, quelling at her harsh tone as she decrees, “Broomstick privileges revoked for a _week!”_

 

A cool voice observes: 

 

“Still as strict as ever I see, Hecate.”

 

She is frozen.

 

It’s just for millisecond, she knows, realistically, but to Hecate’s raw nerves it feels like an eternity; like every one of the thirty years they’ve been apart hits her all at once and stays her to the spot and she can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t speak, can only register the familiar presence next to her (how, still, so _familiar_ ?) as Pippa Pentangle steps into her periphery, so close that the edges of her cloak brush Hecate’s sleeve. Her voice, aloof and distant as it is, winds its way inside Hecate from the base of her skull, tensing her neck and shoulders and travelling down her spine, forcing her more rigid even as her ears rejoice in the lift and cadence that she hasn’t heard in person for decades. Her name clicks off Pippa’s tongue, and Hecate's sure she meant to call her _Miss Hardbroom,_ and she can’t possibly think about what it means that she didn’t. She can’t turn, can’t look at her, can only respond in kind despite the fact that the eyes of a dozen curious students are now honed intently in on them.

 

“Pippa.”

 

She avoids her eyes during their “Well met”s - Pippa’s clipped and sharp and just on the edge of uncivil, while she slips-up over her own and calls Pippa ‘sister’ as though they’re still close, still _friends_ \- but finally looks at her as she straightens, standing mere inches away, hair tucked under her hat, skin bronzed and glowing, face exquisite and utterly implacable. Hecate’s breath stutters at how little she’s changed, how much of the lively teenager that she knew and the confident young woman she’d seen at the Grand Palace are still evident in her face and form and figure, and she wonders if it’s an intrinsic recognition borne of their years of intimacy, or just a byproduct of all the times she’s seen pictures of Pippa growing up in brochures and newspapers and magazines over the course of her adult life. She’s still so beautiful, and Hecate longs to reach for her. The words are out of her mouth before she knows where the sentence is headed and she starts, “You’re looking very…”, and pauses. And what can she possibly offer in conclusion? She reaches for a run-of-the-mill compliment that wouldn’t be too forward or impertinent or assuming; something that doesn’t sound like she’s being either brazen or backhanded, but she suddenly can’t think of anything so she falls back to comfortable territory and goes for acerbicism: “...pink.” 

 

The look in Pippa’s eyes could flay the skin off her back, and she tenses further as the other woman runs her eyes critically over her sensible black dress and severe hairstyle (and to Pippa, Hecate realises with a jolt, she must also look disconcertingly similar to the last time they laid eyes on one another, but for entirely different reasons) and shoots back an uncharitable observation about black being ‘so last century _’._ Hecate bristles and calls her  _vain_ , and Pippa answers through gritted teeth about neither vanity nor pink _being against the Witches’ Code_ and before she knows how it happened they have set themselves at odds, glaring at one another, and Hecate’s heart sinks.

 

She tries to be mollified when Ethel Hallow steps up to introduce herself and she sees the flicker of uneasy recognition in Pippa’s eyes - neither of them had particularly cared for Ursula Hallow back in their school days - and she lies smoothly enough about Mildred’s provenance, although she is forced to despair when Pippa produces a young _wizard_ from her school and Ethel crumbles at the mere sight of him. She’s not even in the mood to reprimand Enid for her whispered mockery as she shoos them all to lunch, and she’s left standing with Pippa and her two bewildered pupils in the draughty entrance hall. 

 

“I’ll show you to your quarters,” she states stiffly, keeping her eyes resolutely ahead, walking off before she even hears Pippa’s noise of acquiescence. The few minutes it takes to reach the guest rooms are agonisingly long, only the sound of small feet scurrying behind them breaking the silence as they march along the corridor and up the stairs, Pippa barely half a pace behind her. She stops abruptly at the rooms that have been set aside for Pentangle’s, and only Pippa’s natural grace prevents her colliding sharply with Hecate’s back (Zach and Sapphire fare less well, and bump into their headmistress with startled apologies, causing Pippa to glower at Hecate even as she smiles and tells them it’s quite alright.)

 

“Lunch is in the Great Hall,” Hecate announces, and leaves without another word, trusting Pippa will be more than capable of finding her way there. She feels the other witch’s eyes on her as she moves back down the corridor, and she can only bear a few seconds of it before she twists her hand and dissolves into the air.

 

She materialises inside her potions lab, mercifully tidied from this morning’s exploits, and sinks onto the wooden steps that run up between the workbenches, leaning her elbows on her knees and lowering her face into her hands. She feels...drained. Tired. Unsteady. Her first meeting with Pippa Pentangle in thirty years is over and it-

 

She can’t even said it was harder than she’d thought, because she’d never thought it would be anything _but_ hard. She supposes it went as well as could be expected. She curses herself a little for her sharpness, but then, she doesn’t know what else to _do._ There’s no other way to get through this. 

 

 _Win the Bee_. _Send them away._

 

She doesn’t want her to go. 

 

Pippa’s been here five minutes and all they’ve done is snipe at one another, but she’s _here_ , and some small, stupid part of Hecate had warmed at the sight of her, icy glare and all. She’s dreading having to face her over the course of the next twenty-four hours, but at the same time she’s already dreading the thought of her leaving, of watching her fly away because somehow, she knows, that will be it. She won’t see Pippa again. She doesn’t want her here; she doesn’t want her to go. The dichotomy is making her feel sick.

 

 _She needs to go_.

 

And Hecate needs something to do. She reaches out with her magic until she locates the signature she’s looking for, and dematerialises with a clench of her fist, her voice preceding her to echo off the stone walls of the corridor:

 

“ _Mildred Hubble.”_

 

_***_

 

She hadn’t been able to find the wretched girl after all. When she had turned the corner, expecting to catch sight of Mildred’s haphazard form, she had been met by Pippa instead, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. They’d regarded each other in silence for a moment, Pippa’s gaze shrewd and appraising, as though she’d just learned something new about Hecate that somehow, inconceivably, cast her in an even worse light than before, then she’d turned on her heel and left without a word. Hecate doesn’t try to pursue Mildred. She checks for her eventually and finds her, somewhat surprisingly, in the library, piling up study books on basic potions, and leaves her to it. 

 

Mildred doesn’t appear for dinner, which is awkward and strained and interminably long, at least from Hecate’s point of view. Pippa comments on Mildred’s absence, and Hecate makes a scathing remark about how _some_ pupils might be taking this competition _seriously_ , and Pippa bites back about not _overworking her students_ and how unhealthy it is for young girls to be missing meals, and Hecate doesn’t really remember what else they bicker about, just that the meal is cold and tasteless and she is only able to choke down a few mouthfuls. Pippa is sitting on the other side of Ada at the teacher’s table, so she can’t really see her unless she turns all the way to her right, and Hecate determinedly avoids doing just that. Ada eventually engages Pippa in conversation of a headmistress-ly nature, and Dimity is happily chomping away on her possibly-potatoes when Hecate becomes cognizant of a set of eyes on her, and she glances up into the carefully mediated gaze of Gwen Bat. 

 

Pippa had greeted Gwen effusively when they had met for dinner, throwing her arms around the other woman in an expansive hug and grinning wide and bright, the first genuine smile Hecate has seen from her since her arrival. Gwen had squeezed her back and proclaimed that it had been “too long!” and Hecate had had to fight back a snarl that said that Gwen couldn’t possibly know what ‘too long’ was, when it came to Pippa. Pippa had been introduced to a blushing Algernon, whom she’d heard _all about_ , and all in all it had made for a happy reunion that threw sharp relief on their own meeting in the hall scarcely half an hour ago. Gwen’s watching her carefully now, obviously having taken stock of their behaviour at the dinner table, trying to gauge her mood. Of all the people at this table Gwen, now, is the one who’s known her longest, probably knows her best, and Hecate’s struck by the thought that the old witch’s joy at having Pippa - the prodigal daughter of the chanting department - home to Cackle’s for a visit is probably being tempered by her concern over how Hecate is coping, and what she’s likely to do, or say. Humiliation creeps up her spine, even as part of her flutters with relief that someone else _knows,_ someone else _remembers_ , and she breaks Gwen’s gaze, pushes her chair back and excuses herself. The walk from the dinner table with Gwen’s stare at her back reminds her painfully of the day, so many years ago, after she’d gotten Pippa’s first letter, and broken down in her former teacher’s empty classroom. She doesn’t look back to see if Pippa has noticed her leave. She grits her teeth until she is out of the hall.


	14. you came and i was longing for you (part two)

If Hecate had thought the evening after Pentangle’s’ arrival was long, it was nothing compared to the night before the Spelling Bee. She had found Ethel after dinner, dragged her unprotestingly to the lab, quizzed her relentlessly for two hours, despaired privately of Mildred, and gone to bed early in the vain hope that she would fall asleep quickly, and thus tomorrow would be over and done with before she knew it. She always slept well before a potions competition; her confidence in her own and her students’ abilities was normally unshakeable, but tonight she can’t even blame the creeping doubt of success for her restless state. 

 

She can think of nothing but Pippa. 

 

She had been a teenager the last time she slept in such close proximity to Pippa Pentangle, and she feels every inch of the distance between them as she lies in bed, arm tucked under her pillow and eyes screwed shut as if she can will herself to sleep by sheer determination. Even though she’s corridors and corridors away, she fancies she can sense Pippa’s presence within the castle walls, now that everyone has gone to bed and the place is still and quiet, and she wonders if she’s imagining the faint tingle on the edge of her perception that _feels_ like Pippa’s magic.

 

She replays the afternoon over and over in her head, and winces internally every time she hears herself chide Pippa for her _pinkness_ , or sees Pippa’s brown eyes narrow in resentment. She watches as Pippa floats merrily around the Great Hall, stopping to talk to adoring children, bestowing smiles on each of them and leaving them starry-eyed in her wake. She thinks of the way they look at _her_ , as she snips and snaps at them day in and day out. She can’t imagine what they’d think if they knew she and Pippa had ever been friends. She imagines Felicity Foxglove’s wide-eyed incredulity, and Enid Nightshade’s snorting laugh, _“What, with_ **_Miss Hardbroom?_ ** _”_ and hears Pippa’s answering chuckle, _“I know. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”_

 

She mentally slaps herself. Pippa’s being here has thrown up so much confusion and insecurity in her that she’s being kept awake by the conjectured opinions of _children_. Her thoughts drift to Mildred Hubble, asleep in the tower room that used to be Hecate’s, where she and Pippa would hide away and read, or play chess, or just talk, sitting on her bed with Hecate’s hair loose around her shoulders, Pippa’s fingers playing idly through the long waves.

 

_“What do you want to do when we leave here, Hiccup?”_

 

Hecate bites her tongue against the pain in her chest. She hasn’t thought about those days in a long time; has made herself forget about them, everything they did and said, and everything they meant to one another, ever since the day Pentangle’s had opened, and she had irrevocably burned her last bridge.

 

_Message received and understood._

 

She thinks she feels Pippa’s magic flicker in the distance, and wonders absurdly if she’s thinking about the same things.

 

When she does finally fall into a fitful sleep, she’s visited by old dreams strung through with memories, her mind hopelessly trying to process the day’s upheaval. She’s younger, so much younger, and her skin prickles with fear at the knowledge that Broomhead is somewhere, here, just around the corner. They are at Cackle’s, but the familiar dark stone of the corridor has been replaced by shining white granite; elegant, soaring windows allowing the sunlight to spill over her, making her squint, hurting her eyes. Indigo and Ethel are competing in the Spelling Bee, and she must be at the Great Hall and make sure they are victorious, or Mistress Broomhead’s fury will know no limits. She weaves her way through the halls, but when she turns a corner expecting to find the grand entrance foyer, she is confronted with Pippa instead - Pippa, as she is now, but dressed in the shimmering gold gown she wore to the Leavers’ Ball, and staring at her, hurt and aching. She can hear her singing, even though her mouth is firmly closed.

 

 _I’m late_ , she says.

 

 _Still as strict as ever,_ Pippa answers, and Hecate realises that she’s wearing Hecate’s watch strung around her slender neck, the fob clasped loosely in her hand.

 

 _I’m sorry,_ Hecate offers, lamely, and she feels exposed and foolish under Pippa’s unwavering gaze. She has to get to the competition. When she steps forward, though, Pippa is suddenly right in front of her, walking her backwards until her spine hits the cold surface of the outside wall, and she can see the gardens cast in shadows over Pippa’s shoulders. There are people inside, she remembers: Ada and Dimity and Gwen and Bernadine Balfour, and Mistress Broomhead, and the Great Wizard is coming, but she’s powerless to even try and stop Pippa as she tilts her head and leans closer, her hands resting on either side of Hecate’s head.

 

 _Someone will know_ , she protests, but it’s weak; she’s already surrendered the fight and Pippa is all too aware of it.

 

 _Everyone knows,_ Pippa replies, and kisses her, hard.

 

Hecate melts immediately, sobs against her mouth and buries her hands in her hair. She can feel tears stinging hot from behind her closed eyelids, and Pippa shushes her gently, kissing her again and again, softer this time as she hums indistinguishable words against her lips. Her body presses against Hecate’s, and gone is the tight hobble skirt and restrictive jacket she wears during the day, replaced by one of the simple black dresses she used to don when she worked in the gardens, the material worn and comfortable. Pippa slides a thigh between her own, and Hecate rocks instinctively towards her, gasping, as Pippa’s tongue slips into her mouth and her hands drop to her waist. Hecate kisses her and kisses her until she is dizzy with it, until Pippa’s hands and Pippa’s body are the only things holding her upright and she pulls back to gaze at her with dark, wounded eyes.

 

_Pip…_

 

 _I’m here_ , Pippa says, simply. 

 

She drops her mouth to Hecate’s neck, and sucks little points of pleasure from her collarbone to her jaw. Her hand trails up from Hecate’s knee, gathering the material of her dress with it, until it’s held in her fist at Hecate’s waist. _I’m here,_ she murmurs again. _I’m here._ The tips of her fingers draw an inexorable path across the top of Hecate’s thigh, and then she’s right there, her fingers dipping into Hecate’s underwear, into Hecate’s body, and she gives over to it completely, chanting Pippa’s name as she falls. 

 

She muffles her cries against Pippa’s lips, wraps her arms around her neck and sways back and forth with the rhythm of her movements. Pippa’s magic is building up all around them: she can feel it, comforting and arousing in equal measure, as she runs a hand over the exposed skin and muscle of Pippa’s back, feels the strength in her arms. The magic and the euphoria pulse through her in time, a harmony played out by Pippa’s quick fingers and clever tongue, and Hecate’s senses are filled with her touch and her sound and her perfume as Pippa builds her faster and faster, until she’s close, so close, _there,_ and Pippa brushes her nose against hers and whispers _Hecate…_

 

She chokes on a gasp as she wakes. Her body, still seeking contact with Pippa’s, arches upward slightly, and she feels the thrum of her orgasm roll from her abdomen down to her feet. She twists, whimpers, disoriented and distressed by the little aftershocks of bliss that flare along her spine and her legs, and tries to catch her breath, grabbing a handful of her bedsheets as an anchor as she whines. Once she regains some semblance of coherence, registers her surroundings and understands what’s happened, her traitorous body floods with shame.

 

She’s had dreams like this before, of course, many and often, and she’s never felt the need to feel particularly guilty or mortified about them - they’re just _dreams_ after all; she can’t control them - but this time...this time Pippa is _here_ , down the halls, and she’s no _right_ after the way she spoke to her this morning, and she’s seized by an irrational fear that in the same way she thinks she can sense Pippa’s magic, Pippa will somehow sense this, and she’ll _know._

 

Once the trembling has stopped, she pushes herself up and into the shower, where she lets the steady pulse of the water soothe some of the tension out of her tightly-wound muscles and rigid spine. She collects herself, concentrates on breathing, and reminds herself that she's being ridiculous, Pippa’s not a mind-reader, and worrying about it is asinine. She just needs to get through the next twelve or so hours, and then this will be over. The Spelling Bee will be won. She just needs to hold it together.

 

She’s managed this far. 

 

***

 

Her rationale carries her as far as the potions lab after breakfast, from which the Pentangle’s contingent are strangely absent. 

 

“Oh, they came down early and grabbed something from the kitchens.” Ada tells her when she tentatively enquiries. “Must be off getting some last minute practice in!” She seems entirely unconcerned, but Hecate still only manages a few bites of porridge. She marches Mildred and Ethel back downstairs smartly after they’ve eaten, and stops short inside her own doorway as she comes face-to-face with Pippa and her students mixing something bright and bubbling in _her_ cauldrons. For a moment, she forgets all about her awkwardness, and jumps straight to outrage as Pippa blithely echoes Ada’s explanation about practice from earlier.

 

“My girls need their cauldrons!” she sputters, infuriated.

 

“Oh, I’m sure they do, Hecate,” Pippa practically jeers, showing her teeth. “Seven rounds; are you sure you’re up to it?” They glare furiously at each other, even as Ada comes in to collect them, Pippa’s mouth set in a grim line, and Hecate feels the heat rise in her cheeks as she remembers that mouth, those hands, from her dream last night and her body reacts quite without her permission. It does the same when they snap at each other outside the competition hall, and as Pippa changes into her formal cape and hat with a theatrical flourish that Hecate knows is solely meant to disconcert her. She grinds her jaw at its effectiveness as she summons her own hat, enters the competition hall and takes her seat, and tries not to let her overwrought senses be hyper-aware of every move made by Pippa, sittingly primly and brightly on Ada’s right.

 

The actual Spelling Bee brings its own wave of fresh hell, of course, and Hecate watches as the Pentangle’s duo prove to be irritatingly effective potioneers after all, and Ethel drops the ball every time Zach so much as glances as her. She watches Mildred like a hawk, determined that the young witch will stay as far away from the Cackle’s cauldron as the rules allow, and she and Pippa congratulate one another insincerely and without making eye-contact whenever either of them scores a point. The pressure of the competition is almost (almost) enough to take her mind off the other witch, as they take a break and the two schools are neck and neck for the title. She takes the opportunity to get up and stretch her legs around the hall, as her girls clamber round to rally Ethel. Mildred has disappeared off somewhere, typically, and Pippa too is nowhere to be seen. By the time they take their seats to commence the final round, Hecate is entirely focused on willing their team to upcoming victory.

 

Then Pippa breaks out the bloody rule book.

 

Her voice is honeyed as she flips to the relevant page, using her free hand to slip a pair of reading glasses onto her pretty oval face, and Hecate, who has never in her adult life been inclined to assignate the term ‘sexy’ to anything, can’t help but stare at her with widening eyes as she runs an elegant finger performatively down a column of text and calls their attention to a clause therein that will put Mildred in the hot-seat. It’s not just the glasses, though, or the way Hecate’s attention can’t help but drop to her perfectly manicured hands slipping over the paper, it’s the _arrogance_ with which she delivers her bombshell - just there, just a touch, underneath the surface - the self-assuredness and the smug little undertone with which she imbues her words that makes Hecate’s stomach swoop not-unpleasantly. She knows, suddenly, that she’s looking at the real Pippa Pentangle: not the carefully curated image she’s become so acquainted with over the years in the press and the public eye, but the Pippa she remembers from her school days, with a core of steel and determination, presented to the world behind a charming smile that can be set aside whenever it gives her the upper-hand. This is Headmistress Pentangle, and it throws Ada almost as much as it does Hecate, as Ada’s affable demeanour drops, just for a second, in the face of Pippa’s confidence. “ _Sh_ _e’s a nice girl,_ ” Hecate sudden recalls her saying dismissively, over a decade ago. “ _Very charming, certainly._ ” 

 

She wonders if Ada thinks her quite so ‘nice’ _,_ now. She almost laughs. Instead, she fixates on what this means for the Bee, as she sees Ethel’s face contort in horror almost as profound as Mildred’s when Ada summons her forward. They’ll lose. Pippa’s trying to ensure they’ll lose. She lets the ire boil up within her at this obvious gambit, and leans back in her chair to try and catch Pippa’s eye for the first time since the opening bell rang. Her voice emerges low and scornful, with the first acknowledgement of their history either of them has given in the time they’ve been here together:

 

“You’re doing this to spite me, aren’t you.”

 

Pippa faces her sharply, and Hecate recognises the look in her eyes as the one she’d seen in her dream, at the Leavers’ Ball, on the castle lawns the day she hadn’t shown up for their broomstick display. For just a second, Pippa breaks her façade and lets all the pain Hecate has caused her surge to the surface like a tidal wave, before she calls it back; she meets her gaze head on as she declares, “I just remember what it’s like, to be shunted aside like an old broom,” and then she turns away and leaves Hecate drowned.

 

This has never just been about a potions competition for either of them, then.

 

She feels small and petty and sick, and it takes her an age to turn away from Pippa, even when the other witch has whirled back around to cheer on her young contender for the Weather Spell. She loses track of what’s happening, so lost is she is a haze of self-recrimination and remorse, and it takes all her considerable self-control not to fly up from the table and leave the hall immediately.

 

It’s not like it’s a surprise, she reproaches herself, bitterly. She knew she had hurt Pippa, and badly, and she’d _meant_ for Pippa to be angry and confused and to walk away never wanting to speak to her again. She’d encouraged it, with all the neglected letters and cards, hadn’t she? She’d deliberately set out to make Pippa think she didn’t want her. Why on earth should she feel so blind-sided now that she knows how well it worked?

 

A rumble of thunder and Ethel Hallow’s shriek pulls her out of her reverie, and she’s astonished to find a storm cloud broiling over the girl’s head, as Algernon delightedly announces that Cackle’s Academy are the winners. She claps automatically, mind still racing, off-balance and desperate for somewhere quiet where she can pull the shreds of herself back together in peace. She can’t help but steal a glance to her right, and sees Pippa throw a wink at Mildred Hubble, and her head swims a little more. Pippa rises from her chair at the same time as Ada, and Hecate follows meekly. 

 

“Congratulations, Miss Cackle.”

 

“Thank you, Miss Pentangle. You were worthy competitors.” Ada’s amiable good-natured smile and gracious tone are firmly back in place as she shakes Pippa’s hand. “Perhaps we shall meet again next year!” Pippa’s answering smile is tight. “Perhaps.”

 

She drops Ada’s hand and gives Hecate a cursory nod, “Miss Hardbroom,” before sashaying over to console her downcast pupils who receive her commiserations with identical devoted expressions. Hecate wonders if she regrets revealing so much. It’ll likely be the last thing Pippa ever really says to her. Before she can even consider giving in to the urge to cry, she snaps her fingers, and is gone, registering a surprised sound from Ada even as she scatters into the air.

 

She’s aiming for the security of her lab, but in her disconcerted state she overshoots and ends up materialising outside the door to her old dispensary. It’s largely abandoned now: she had moved all of her stores and ingredients into the Potions Classroom when she took over the department, so they were always to hand and she could monitor them closely while she taught. Still, she uses it to keep excess plants and potions and paperwork out of the way, and she unlocks it with a flick of her fingers and stumbles into the cool darkness inside. She practically falls into the seat behind her old desk, and lays her head down on her arms atop the solid wooden surface. Her stomach is heaving and her head spins, and she closes her eyes and tries to regain some control of herself.

 

It’s too much, that’s all. It’s been too much, too quickly. Yesterday morning she’d had no notion of ever seeing Pippa again in this life, and then the announcement had been made and there had been no time to process or prepare before Pippa was appearing before her. If she’d had warning, maybe, she could have thought about how to handle this, planned what to say to make this easier on both of them. She wonders suddenly how long Pippa had known she’d be coming to Cackle’s. As the reigning champions, it was inevitable that the winners of the semi-finals would have to face them. She imagines Pippa, cheering in delight as her school had qualified, then her face as it dawned on her that that means being in the same room as Hecate again. Had her heart sunk at the realisation? Or had she hoped, however fleetingly, that it might all be alright, and they could greet one another on friendly terms once again; that she’d discover the whole thing had been a terrible misunderstanding? The Headmistress of the competing academy always attends the final with her school, but Hecate thinks if she’d been in Pippa’s position she might have given into the temptation to send her deputy in her stead. Pippa’s always been braver than her. Has she spent the day in half the state of agitation and discomfiture that Hecate has? Perhaps she just hides it better.

 

Hecate’s not sure how long she sits there in the shadows, willing herself calm, but she’s fairly sure she hears the bell ring, and then the clatter of feet heading down the corridor past her towards her classroom. Ethel and Mildred will have been taken off to a celebratory lunch with Zach and Sapphire, from which her absence will have been undoubtedly noted, but they’re both due for their fourth period Potions lesson with the rest of the first year, competition or no competition. Pentangle’s should have departed for the journey back to Kent by now, too. _You didn’t even try to say goodbye,_ she berates herself, but she knows deep down there was no way she could have managed. Thankfully, Hecate thinks she might retain enough presence of mind to get through her classes for the rest of the afternoon. She levers herself up, straightens her skirt and jacket, runs a hand over her hair to make sure it’s still in place, steels herself, and steps out into the corridor only to narrowly avoid Mildred Hubble running smack-bang into her shins.

 

“ _Mildred Hubble!”_

 

“Sorry, Miss Hardbroom!” she exclaims unrepentantly, bouncing on her feet excitedly.  Hecate is about to deliver an almighty row about running in the corridor when she realises that she hasn’t even congratulated Mildred on her winning potion this morning, and she curses herself for what feels like the thousandth time today. She _had_ tried to keep Mildred out of the competition, and in the end the girl had come through and produced a perfectly respectable spell, and Hecate is rather ashamed of herself. It’s a feeling she’s getting used to.

 

“Be more careful,” she settles for, although her voice lacks its usual bite. Mildred blinks guilessly at her. “And...well done. For your Weather Spell. It was...quite satisfactory. I’m-” she pauses momentarily. What _is_ she? Astonished, certainly, but it would be mean of her to say so. Relieved, maybe? Pleased? Proud? She gazes down at the little girl who has been a constant source of both irritation and surprise to her for almost a year and who, despite set-backs and criticism and Hecate’s iron-clad conviction that she’s nothing but trouble, has tried every day to prove she belongs at Cackle’s. In spite of herself, she can’t help but admire that sort of perseverance. “Impressed,” she finishes bluntly. Mildred looks like she can’t decide whether to fall over from shock or explode with delight, and Hecate feels a momentary flash of amused affection for her. 

 

Momentary.

 

Mildred recovers quickly, “Thank you, Miss Hardbroom!” and then delivers a message from Ada that she would like to see Hecate upstairs in the Cryptobiology classroom. “She said it was urgent,” Mildred expounds, and Hecate is puzzled as to why Ada wouldn’t just summon her to her office as usual. The classroom is largely disused, though, and Hecate wonders if Ada is looking for somewhere they are unlikely to be disturbed. No doubt she is preparing to give Hecate a thorough dressing down for her behaviour this morning, and the grievous breach of etiquette she had committed by skipping the post-competition lunch. She transfers into the empty classroom, and feels slightly vexed that Ada’s not even there yet, given how ‘urgent’ it was that she meet with her, but before she has much time to simmer about it, the door is opening and she turns to see a now-familiar splash of bright pink enter the room and her heart stops.

 

Pippa doesn’t notice her at first, leaning her broom against the wall and sweeping the classroom with her eyes ( _looking for someone_ , Hecate realises). She freezes when she spots Hecate standing rigidly to her right, fingers reflexively curled into her palms at her side. Neither of them speaks for a moment, and then Pippa breaks the silence with a note of resigned comprehension in her voice. “Mildred said Miss Cackle wanted to see me.”

 

 _Mildred Hubble,_ Hecate thinks murderously, her previous warm feelings evaporating instantly. She will see to it that the girl _lives_ in detention for the rest of her years here. 

 

“That’s funny,” she replies without a trace of humour. “She said the same to me.” Pippa manages to huff out a semblance of a laugh that’s really more a sigh.

 

“I’ve got a feeling someone’s been playing a trick on us.”

 

“It would appear so.”

 

The pair of them study the floor intently for a moment, before Pippa takes a deep breath and Hecate steels herself for whatever’s to come.

 

“I should probably tell you that I’ve offered Mildred a scholarship,” she says bluntly, and whatever Hecate had been expecting, that certainly wasn’t it. Even though she’s just been contemplating throwing the young witch off the roof of the academy in revenge for this awkward tête-à-tête she’s forced them into, and even though she’s spent _the entire year_ trying to be rid of her, the thought that Mildred might suddenly, actually be _gone_ knocks her for six. Startled, she has no idea what to say, or what expression she’s supposed to make with her face, and she ends up just staring blankly at Pippa for what feels like a very long time. Braced for a reaction that never comes, Pippa’s next words are thin and too bright, and for the first time since her arrival Hecate sees a trace of nervousness in the other witch’s disposition, which she reigns back in almost immediately. “Is that the time? I’ve got a long flight ahead of me.”

 

Pippa whirls around and begins walking towards the door. Hecate averts her eyes, unable to watch her leave. She tenses every muscle, almost literally holding herself together until Pippa has left the room and she can face whatever emotional whiplash is about to accost her in private. _Let her leave,_ she thinks desperately. _Let her go, and take the damnable girl with her._ And then Pippa stops.

 

There’s an almost tangible shift in the atmosphere, and Hecate realises with both horror and relief that this is it. Pippa’s not going to just leave without another word. There will be no reprieve.

 

Pippa’s always been braver that her.

 

“You were my best friend, Hecate,” the other woman states, low and tired, with just a hint of accusation, “and then suddenly you just stopped talking to me.” Her next question is pained, a thirty year old bruise that’s never healed. “ _Why_?”

 

 _Because I loved you,_ Hecate does not answer. _And because I think that you loved me._

 

A memory from their school days floats to the surface as she stands there, trying to formulate a response. It had been a few weeks since Indigo, and Hecate had changed everything she could about herself by then - her hair, her attitude, her name. Most of her so-called friends had dropped her quickly when they realised she was a different person to the one they had left before the summer break, and now they derided her for being too serious, too studious, too boring. She had taken to spending her evenings alone in the library, poring over her copy of the code and ignoring the stares and whispers from the other girls, pretending that she was happier on her own. She was better off, she told herself. Her friendship hadn’t brought anything but disaster. It was why it had startled her so when a slight figure had dropped into the seat beside her one evening, complete with her own copy of the Witches’ Code, and asked Hecate gently if she could join her. Pippa had purposefully dismissed the scandalised confusion of the other witches who tended to converge around her and who were vehemently opposed to the association; she had been the first one to adopt Hecate’s new name without question, and try to understand the person she had become, and eventually the others had grudgingly accepted her dissention and got on with the business of being friends with the pretty, popular Pippa whilst doing their utmost to ignore Hecate’s existence altogether. Hecate found she preferred it that way. It hadn’t been entirely easy for either of them though, the way their schoolmates had treated Hecate and they way they flatly refused to understand Pippa’s devotion to her, and she had worried, as time progressed and they grew closer, how much else Pippa would be willing to give up for her. 

 

She offers a poor facsimile of her reasons now: “You were always the popular one; you didn’t want me getting in your way.” She would have, she tells herself again for the hundred thousandth time since she cut Pippa off and refused to explain. She would have filled the doorway of Cackle’s like a stone colossus herself, and Pippa wouldn’t even have tried to find a way past her. The weak excuse doesn’t cut it, as Hecate expects, and Pippa’s dismissing it with a shake of her head before she’s even finished speaking.

 

“I didn’t care about those silly witches. _You_ were the only one I wanted to be friends with.”

 

 _I know_. Hecate could weep. She struggles to course-correct, to come up with some sort of an account of things that Pippa will accept, and she stumbles over her words as she releases them thickly, unsure of what it is exactly she’s going to say. “But...I thought…” Pippa cuts her off before she finishes, filling in her own conclusions while Hecate struggles to speak.

 

“What? Because you were the tall, gangly one, I’d rather spend time with them?” There’s frustration and disbelief in the misplaced realisation, as though Pippa can’t believe they’ve wasted three decades over _this_ , and Hecate can’t even correct her, can only let her think that this is indeed Hecate’s justification for tearing their friendship apart and leaving them in ruins. The tears are clawing their way up her throat, and she is silent as Pippa chokes out, “All this time we’ve spent hating each other.”

 

And now she imagines it was over some stupid childhood jealousy, Hecate thinks, and she’ll find Hecate utterly pathetic, a grown woman who has slighted her attempts to reach out over and over again because she thought Pippa liked her other friends better than her. How small she must look to her. How sad. And how terrible that it’s still a better story than the alternative. She’s about to turn away, ashamed, when Pippa upends her world again with four, soft words.

 

“I’ve missed you, Hiccup.”

 

Everything quiets. Just for a second, the buzzing that’s been in Hecate’s head since Pippa arrived (or, perhaps, since Pippa left) ceases and she stares, dumbstruck, at the woman before her; at the forlorn cast of her shoulders and the injury in her eyes. _Hiccup_ . Her ears ring with Pippa’s laughter on the day she’d bestowed the nickname upon her, despite Hecate’s vigorous protests; the way she had caught Hecate’s arm and giggled herself silly, bent over with mirth as her friend squawked in indignation. _I love you, Hiccup. You’re my best friend Hiccup. Hiccup, why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?_ Pippa is pressing her lips together in a vain attempt to disguise her own agitation, and there’s a defeated look creeping in around her corners as Hecate stands there stunned, unable to formulate a coherent response. Still, she waits: her confession is made, and she will not back down, and again Hecate marvels at her courage and finally, finally finds a little of her own as she blurts:

 

“I’ve missed you, too. Pipsqueak.”

 

Pippa is in her arms before she really has the time to register what’s happening, clinging to Hecate and gulping down a sob as Hecate lifts her hands to her back and presses them between her shoulder blades, holding Pippa against her like she can’t believe she’s warm, and solid, and real, burying her nose into her collar. She feels Pippa’s chest lift against hers with every breath, and notes that they’re both gasping a little, both gripping a little too tightly, and she relishes every second of it. _I’ve missed you_ , she wants to murmur again and again, but her voice is lost to her, and she closes her eyes and just holds on. Pippa smells like sandalwood and amber, and the sun over the lake on a summer afternoon with the wind in her hair.

 

A distant bell brings her back to the present, and her eyes flutter open to see Mildred Hubble grinning at them from the door. Automatic embarrassment swells up inside her at being caught _cuddling_ with another teacher in a classroom, and then she remembers that Mildred, the little hellion, had set all this up, and she can’t be angry, not really, not when she’s still wrapped up in Pippa and she feels almost settled for the first time in what might be an eternity. She might even be persuaded not to stick her in detention for the rest of her academic career.

 

With a jolt, Hecate remembers that the rest of said academics might not even be carried out under her tenure, and in a move she will find frankly unbelievable later, she peels herself away from Pippa with a mumbled apology and _runs_ after Mildred to stop her in the corridor. 

 

“I hear Miss Pentangle’s offered you a scholarship,” she calls out, and she’s aware that she sounds less clipped than usual, that she hasn’t recovered her customary armour just yet, and she flushes slightly. Pippa, who has apparently both more grace and more presence of mind, materialises elegantly out of the air as they wait to hear Mildred’s decision on her own future. Hecate’s eyebrows furrow in bewilderment as she thanks Pippa politely, and declines.

 

“I like being the odd one out,” Mildred declares, looking directly at Hecate, and Hecate knows that something has passed between her, and Mildred, and Pippa that she never quite going to be able to parse; not fully. Mildred turns and skips away down the hall.

 

“She’s a lovely girl, you know,” Pippa says gently, as they both follow Mildred with their eyes until she turns the corner. “She could be a real credit to you, if you give her a chance.” Hecate swallows, and admits secretly that there is a part of her that is relieved that Mildred won’t be leaving. It wouldn’t be the same without her, she supposes. She knows she’ll almost certainly be regretting her sentimentality in less than a week. “Hecate,” Pippa speaks softly to get her attention, and when Hecate turns her head she smiles with affection and amusement that Hecate can’t believe she deserves, and leans a little closer to her. Hecate’s breath catches. “Give the girl back her cat,” Pippa says, and Hecate doesn’t know what expression must be on her face, but a teasing grin tugs at Pippa’s mouth and she laughs merrily. Hecate bites back an answering smile, and looks up at Pippa, suitably chastised. 

 

“I will.”

 

They look at one another and smile for a moment more, and Hecate is astounded by how it seems like someone has flipped a switch in Pippa, and she’s no longer angry and resentful and all is forgiven. She knows it’s not true, of course; she knows they have many, many more conversations ahead of them, and this doesn’t change anything, fundamentally - she’s still stuck here and Pippa can never, ever know, but for the moment Hecate allows herself to do something she hasn’t done in a very long time. She allows herself to hope.

 

Just before things threaten to turn awkward, Pippa sighs, and gestures with her head down the corridor. “I really do have to be getting on,” she says regretfully. “It’s a fair flight, and I don’t want Zach and Sapphire falling asleep on their brooms before we’re halfway home.”

 

“Of course,” Hecate replies, and while her elation still dips at the thought of Pippa leaving, it’s tempered by the fact that she’s going on far better terms than she arrived. Pippa summons her broom. 

 

“Walk me out?”

 

They trail down the corridor, Pippa with as much reluctance as Hecate, and just before they reach the entrance hall, Pippa snags her arm and turns Hecate to face her. “I’m so glad…”, she begins, but then some emotion closes her throat and she has to look away without finishing her sentence. Hecate feels an empathetic pull in her chest, and she covers the hand on her arm with her own. 

 

“Me too,” she says quietly. 

 

Pippa takes a deep breath and nods; smiles. “Shall I mirror you soon?” she asks tentatively, as if Hecate could possibly have any other answer than:

 

“I’d like that.”

 

“Good!” Pippa exclaims brightly, shaking herself out of her seriousness, and dropping her hand from Hecate’s. “Ah! Here come my little owls.” Zach and Sapphire are being shepherded towards them by Ada, and Pippa shoos them towards the door as she bows to Ada and thanks her warmly for her hospitality. 

 

“Well, we look forward to seeing you again sometime, Miss Pentangle,” Ada tells her, as she bows back courteously, and clasps her hands at her middle.

 

“I’m sure you shall,” Pippa responds with an enigmatic wink, and she glances at Hecate, who nods to her. Their eyes catch for a moment, and then Pippa is gone in a swirl of pink cloak and hat. Ada regards the door with a thoughtful expression.

 

“Well,” she says eventually, not looking directly at Hecate. “That was interesting.” She draws a breath and turns to her with a cheerful mien that catches Hecate a little off guard. “Back to work!” she exclaims, and busies off back towards her office without a backwards glance. 

 

Hecate stands alone in the empty hall for a few minutes. She lets the emotion of the last two days flow and ebb through her as she breathes deeply through her nose, and she gazes at the spot where Pippa had stood and allows herself a moment of rare peace. She’s gone, but she’s not gone forever, and she’ll mirror in a few days. Hecate smiles, and then sighs.

 

She had better go and retrieve the damn cat.


End file.
